household there was still much that would strike a present-day observer
as remarkable—for the older spirit still made itself felt, though
ancient forms were passing away. For instance, the relations existing
between the head of the house and those about him and dependent upon
him, if no longer what they were a hundred years before, had not yet
begun to assume their distinguishing modern characteristics. The
position of servant, ’prentice, or journeyman still partook of a certain
suggestion of servitude, which it has required many years of social
evolution to wear partially away. Our nineteenth-century notion of
contract based upon terms something like equal, at least in theory,—of
so much money paid in return for such and such services rendered,—had
not yet established itself; and while the understanding between employer
and employed was gradually acquiring more and more of a commercial
quality, it had not by any means lost all its personal implications. The
’prentices of the time, for example, were something more and something
less than those occupying analogous positions in our own days. They
belonged to the establishment, lived with their master, ate at his
table, formed part of the family; yet at the same time wore coats of
blue—the color which everywhere symbolized servitude, and even
constituted, as we know from “The City Madam” and other plays, the
livery of Bridewell. They not only were their master’s assistants in the
work of the shop; they furnished him also a kind of body-guard, or
retinue,—for on occasions when he had to make excursions after dark they
went with him, bearing torches or lanterns to light the way, and stout
clubs, for use in case of sudden assault. But the personal character of
such relationships is perhaps most fully shown in the fact that masters
and mistresses dealt out corporal punishment to their servants, a
universal practice, which, as Chamberlayne tells us in his “Survey,” was
expressly sanctioned by law. In Heywood’s “English Traveller,” young
Geraldine accounts for the circumstance that Bess, Mrs. Winscott’s maid,
tells slanderous stories about her, by the supposition that—
“Perhaps her mistress
Hath stirred her anger by some word or blow,
Which she would thus revenge.”
In the establishments of the gentry, the porter’s lodge was the
recognized place for the corporal punishment of servants, male and
female, a fact to which many references will be found in the
contemporary drama; as, for instance, in Shirley’s “Grateful Servant”
and “Triumph of Peace,” and Massinger’s “Duke of Milan” and “The City
Madam.” Indeed, the whole domestic economy of the time still exhibited
much of the semi-patriarchal character of former centuries, when those
in authority not only exacted due service from the men and maidens
beneath them, but held it also as part of their paternal responsibility
to educate and chastise.
As for the children, they too were far differently situated from the
boys and girls of the present day. There was as yet no talk of the
rights of childhood, and household law was rigid and severe. At school
the rudiments of knowledge were pounded into young brains by sheer force
of arm; and when the children went from the schoolhouse to the home,
they merely exchanged one form of despotism for another. In every
well-ordered family, the young people habitually stood or knelt in the
presence of their elders, not venturing to sit down without express
permission; while correction by blows continued to be their lot so long
as they remained under the parental roof and control. Even the children
of the wealthiest and noblest families in the land were subjected to the
same kind of treatment; and we know that in their early years Queen
Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey had been pinched and cuffed and smacked
like their less famous sisters. All this has been changed now, and we
have grown in some respects wiser, in others simply more sentimental.
Yet, with whatever feelings we may look back at the harshness of the
past, let us, at all events, have the candor to acknowledge that the
discipline which produced men like Sidney and Raleigh and Spenser, and
women like the two just referred to, cannot be pronounced altogether a
failure.
* * * * *
And now a word or two about some of the every-day habits of the time.
Among the middle classes, as a whole, the ancient doctrine of early to
bed and early to rise, upon which Charles Lamb threw such well-merited
ridicule, was currently accepted, and this almost of necessity.
Artificial lights were as yet in little use, and being thus more
dependent upon the natural alternations of day and night, the good folks
under the Virgin Queen inevitably kept better hours than do the
Londoners of the present time. In Dekker’s “Shoemaker’s Holiday,” the
master shoemaker is depicted roundly rating his wife and maids for their
laziness in not having breakfast ready, and his anger seems at least a
trifle excessive to the modern Cockney, since it subsequently turns out
that it is not yet seven o’clock. In reading the old comedies, we are
again and again struck by the complementary facts that the activities of
life were well advanced while the day was still young, and that few
scenes of a social character are laid in the evening time.
As regards eating, important as the subject doubtless is, we need not
say much. Comparing the Elizabethan age with the immediate past, we may
safely assert that men were more temperate now than they had been—that
they fed less grossly, and spent less time at table. But the
abstemiousness was, after all, only relative. It was still, from our
point of view, a period of gluttony. The early breakfast of meat and
ale; the morning luncheon, or bever; the twelve-o’clock dinner, with its
exceedingly substantial fare; and, finally, in the evening, what Don
Armado, in “Love’s Labor’s Lost,” described as “the nourishment which is
called supper,”—all these made up a series of gastronomic undertakings
at which we can look back only with mingled amazement and disgust. The
staple articles of diet were the various kinds of meat, which were
partaken of in immense quantities, with but little bread and only a
limited accompaniment of vegetables. But almost as important as the
meats was the pudding, for which the English had acquired so great a
reputation that a contemporary foreigner fairly goes into a transport of
enthusiasm about it. The worst feature of all was the enormous
consumption of intoxicating liquors. Tea, coffee, and cocoa—those
delightful cups that cheer but not inebriate, for which we moderns can
hardly be too thankful—were as yet unknown in England; and, in their
absence, every meal was washed down with mighty draughts of ale and
sack. Testimony to the drunkenness of the English at this time is
appalling, whether we turn to the plays themselves, or to the writings
of professed moralists, such as Camden’s “Elizabeth,” Reeve’s “God’s
Plea for Nineveh,” Tryon’s “Way to Health,” Dekker’s “Seven Deadly
Sins,” Wither’s “Abuses Stript and Whipt,” and Thomas Young’s “England’s
Bane,” which may be mentioned as specimens of a voluminous output of
similar character. No wonder that, as Iago and Hamlet remind us, the
English people had become a byword for inebriety among the nations of
the continent.
It must, however, be added, as one favorable sign of the times, that
table manners were, on the whole, distinctly improving. Bad as they
still were in many important particulars, a change for the better was
quite perceptible. For instance, people thought it incumbent on them now
to wash before and after dinner, a ceremony all the more needful, as
fingers were still commonly used where we use forks, “the laudable use”
of which, as Jonson has it, came in towards the close of Shakspere’s
life; and generally a certain amount of delicacy in what Ouida has
pronounced the essentially disgusting operation of eating, was for the
first time beginning to be looked for, at any rate amongst those in the
higher ranks of society.
Hardly less important in social economy than eating is dress, which in
turn demands a share of our attention. Unfortunately, however, it is
impossible in the small space here at our disposal to give any adequate
idea of the extent, variety, and extravagance of the fashions prevalent
during the period with which we are now dealing, and which form a
curious offset to the crudities we have noticed in household furniture
and appliances. Harrison, in his “Description of England,” declares that
the taste for change and novelty had simply run wild; and he and the
outspoken Stubbs are never weary of declaring that while other nations
have their own special extravagances, the English gather up and adopt
the follies of all the rest of Europe. Here is a passage from another
contemporary writer, Thomas Becon, on the same subject: “I think no
realm in the world, no, not among the Turks and Saracens, doth so much
in the variety of their apparel as the Englishmen do at this present.
Their coat must be made after the Italian fashion, their cloak after the
use of the Spaniards, their gown after the manner of the Turks; their
cap must be of the French fashion; and at the last their dagger must be
Scottish with a Venetian tassel of silk. To whom may the Englishman be
compared worthily, but to Esop’s crow? For as the crow decked himself
with feathers of all kinds of birds, even so doth the vain
Englishman.... He is an Englishman; but he is also an Italian, a
Spaniard, a Turk, a Frenchman, a Scotch, a Venetian, and at last what
not?”
This is only a sample; passages of similar import might be multiplied
almost without number. The fashions of the day were indeed absurd and
extravagant to the last degree. Richness and picturesqueness were the
two things aimed at alike in male and in female costume; and in both
cases the colors were as brilliant as the stuffs were costly. The
following speech of Sir Glorious Tipto, in Jonson’s “New Inn,” will give
some idea of the run of masculine modes, as seen by the vigorous old
satirist:—
“I would put on
The Savoy chain about my neck, the ruff
And cuffs of Flanders; then the Naples hat
With the Rome hatband and the Florentine agate,
The Milan sword, the cloak of Genoa, set
With Brabant buttons—all my given pieces,
Except my gloves, the natives of Madrid.”
Over against such a strange human specimen as is thus pictured in the
imagination, we may well set the women of the time, as painted, rouged,
highly scented, bejewelled, bewigged, in French hoods, starched Cambric
ruffs, close-fitting jerkins, and embroidered velvet gowns, they look
down upon us from the walls of many an Elizabethan house, and fill the
busy scene in many a contemporary play. Women, Lyly thought—so far had
the artifices of the toilet carried them,—were in reality the least part
of themselves. Some of their freaks of fashion in particular drew down
the ire alike of the playwright and of the more serious satirist. One
was the habit of painting the face, so frequently referred to by
Shakspere and others. A second was the very common practice of wearing
false hair, treated at length, along with nearly all similar
extravagances of the period, by the irrepressible Stubbs. Every reader
of Shakspere will recall the passage from Bassanio’s moralizings on
“outward shows,” in which this fashion is alluded to:—
“Look on beauty,
And you shall see ’tis purchased by the weight;
Which therein works a miracle in nature,
Making them lightest that wear most of it;
So are those crisped snaky golden locks
Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,
Upon supposed fairness, often known
To be the dowry of a second head,
The skull that bred them in the sepulchre;”
and the parallel lines in the sixty-eighth sonnet, in which the same
point is touched on, with striking similarity of phrasing. The “golden”
color of the locks, here specially emphasized, it may be noted in
passing, was particularly popular, on account of the reddish, or, as her
flatterers would insist, the golden, hue of Queen Elizabeth’s head-gear.
Finally, a great deal was said about the altogether needless and
reprehensible extravagance shown in certain small details of dress. We
may take the one item of foot-covering as an example. Herein all the
worst taste of the day was illustrated; for shoes were made of the most
expensive materials, and were frequently covered with artificial flowers
and other kinds of decoration. Thus, Massinger, in “The City Madam,”
speaks of rich “pantofles in ostentation shown, and roses worth a
family”; while Stubbs, in his “Anatomy of Abuses,” refers to shoes
“embroidered with gold and silver all over the foot.”
Yet, upon the whole, truth compels us to admit that, if we are to trust
contemporary evidence, masculine fashions exceeded in wildness,
absurdity, and monstrous barbarity those of the other sex. “Women are
bad, but men are worse,”—such is the distinct judgment of Burton, in his
“Anatomy of Melancholy”; and while we know from the speculative Jaques
that “the city madam,” would sometimes bear “the cost of princes on
unworthy shoulders,” Burton again is our authority for the statement
that it was no uncommon thing for a man to put a thousand oxen into a
suit of apparel, and to wear a whole manor on his back.
I mentioned incidentally just now that class distinctions were severely
marked out by differences in costume. Certain sumptuary enactments
promulgated about this time undertook to regulate down to the minutest
details what should and what should not be worn by the various classes
of the community, wealth and social standing being taken together as the
basis on which to settle the problems of the toilet and personal
adornment. But within the limits allowed by such regulations, and
sometimes even irrespective of them (for grandmotherly legislation here
as always stood foredoomed to failure) extravagance in fashion remained
throughout one of the salient characteristics of the day. The dress of
the citizen and his wife, if less elegant, was equally showy, and
sometimes quite as expensive, as that of the man of mode and the woman
of the court; and so it was through all grades of society, from the
highest to the lowest, or, as Harrison put it in his vivid phrase, from
the courtier to the carter.
While we are still concerned with this item of dress it is amusing to
notice that three hundred years ago people were to be found worrying
their tailors and abusing their dressmakers as it is the custom to do at
the present day. We might quote illustrations from more than one comedy;
but let us once more fall back upon Harrison. “How many times,” says
this quaint old writer, “must a garment be sent back to him that made
it? What chafing, what fretting, what reproachful language doth the poor
workman bear away.... For we must puff and blow and sweat till we drop,
that our clothes may stand well upon us.” As we read such a passage as
this in its original strange old spelling (which, for the sake of
uniformity, we have not here reproduced), we have surely to
acknowledge—though it goes much against the grain to do so—that our
manners have at bottom changed less than our orthography.
* * * * *
And now we must leave the ranks of the citizens and trading folks to
deal for a moment or two with the more fashionable world.
The society of the time, to employ the word which in modern parlance has
assumed a highly specialized meaning, was artificial to an absurd and
almost inconceivable extent. Affectations, indeed, made up the larger
part of life; and yet beneath them all were a core of sound reality and
a healthy element of spontaneity. Euphuism and Italianism had for the
time being taken full possession of the whole aristocratic world. Yet
Euphuism and Italianism were but external crazes; and it was one mission
of the age to show that men could be heroes in the foolishest dress, and
do great deeds with the most ridiculous of phrases upon their lips. We
could not here enter upon the task of analyzing the life and aims of the
men and women who surrounded the Queen at her court; but as an offset to
the steady-going middle classes of whom we have had much to say, we must
try to present, if only in rapidly sketched outline, the typical
Elizabethan gallant, or fashionable young man about town, as we find him
portrayed for us in the plays and pamphlets of the time.
The accomplishments of the young man of this description were numerous
and varied enough; but they were all in keeping with the character of
the perfect gentleman as set forth by Castiglione in his “Cortegiano,” a
work which had been translated by Thomas Hoby in 1561, and had forthwith
become a kind of text-book or Bible for the youthful fashionable world.
He could dance, sing, and play the viol de gamba; fence, ride, and hunt;
write verses, turn pretty compliments, and take his part in the exchange
of witty repartees, stocking his memory with scraps of plays and
stories, lest his own mother-sense should fail him. He could read the
three languages of Portia’s summary of requirements in which
Falconbridge was lacking—Latin, French, and Italian,—and was perfectly
at home in what Jonson calls the “perfumed terms of the day”; he had
some acquaintance with the poets in vogue; played cards, tennis, and
other fashionable games, as a matter of course; and, last but not least,
was learned in all matters connected with the drama, etiquette, and
dress.
These were not great qualifications; but such a young man had little
need of great qualifications, since he had no great aims or ideals. Let
us read over his every day’s experiences and doings as we find them
given in Dekker’s “Gull’s Horn Book” and other similar productions, and
this statement will call for no further commentary.
He was not an early riser—for, wearied with his overnight exertions, he
scarcely ever left his couch till the plebeian Londoner was already
thinking seriously about his midday meal. Then began the first important
task of the day—the toilet, which was so elaborate a matter that Lyly,
in his “Midas,” speaks of its being almost “a whole day’s work to
dress.” But when at length he stood erect in his scented doublet and
gold-laced cloak, with the roses in his shoes, the bunch of toothpicks
in his hat, the watch hung about his neck, his earrings, and his sword,
he was ready to partake of a breakfast of meat and ale with such
appetite as he could muster for the occasion, and then, jumping on his
horse, with his page and horse-boy behind him, to sally forth upon the
regular adventures of the day.
Curiously enough, as it may well seem to us, his first place of resort
would very probably be St. Paul’s Cathedral. One may well ask what
object could possibly take him thither. The answer lies in the fact that
St. Paul’s Church in those days was the great place of rendezvous for
all the gay and fashionable world. “Thus,” says Dekker, “doth my middle
aisle show like the Mediterranean Sea, in which as well the merchant
hoists sails to purchase wealth honestly as the rover to light upon
prize unjustly. Thus am I like a common mart, where all the commodities
(both the good and the bad) are to be bought and sold. Thus, while
devotion kneels at her prayers, doth profanation walk under her nose, in
contempt of religion.” Francis Osborne, writing as late as 1658, says
that it was a fashion of the times for the principal gentry, lords,
commons, and professions, to meet in St. Paul’s Church by eleven, and
walk in the middle aisle till twelve, and after dinner from three till
six, “during which time some discourse of business, others of news.”
Many bustling scenes in the old comedies are laid in this same middle
aisle, where, amid bills posted as advertisements, and crowds of
servants looking out for places, of sharpers, like Jonson’s Shift, with
a keen eye for prey, and of loafers, with nothing else to do, all sorts
of people strolled about, with their hats on, chatting, laughing, and
discussing finance or politics or scandal, till the whole place was
alive with the hum of voices, the rustle of raiment, and the jingle of
spurs. “I walked in St. Paul’s to see the fashions,” remarks a character
in one of Middleton’s plays. There Face threatened to advertise Subtle’s
misdeeds; and it is a matter of common history that Falstaff picked
Bardolph up in the same spot. It was thus its reputation as a place of
general convenience, and one in which to see and to be seen, that gave
St. Paul’s the importance it undoubtedly possessed in the social life of
the time.
St. Paul’s Walk and its varied interests would keep our young man
occupied till the hour of dinner, a meal of which he would probably
partake in the bustle and excitement of the ordinary. The ordinary—the
forerunner of the modern restaurant and _table d’hôte_—was then a novel
institution, and as such enjoyed immense popularity among the gilded
youth. Three grades were commonly recognized—the aristocratic ordinary,
for which, to judge from a remark in Middleton’s “Trick to Catch the Old
One,” about two shillings would be charged; the twelvepenny ordinary,
frequented by tradesmen, professional people, and middle-class citizens;
and the threepenny, to which flocked only the lowest and most
questionable characters. The first-named of the three, Dekker tells us,
was the great resort of all the court gallants. There friends and
acquaintances met, ate, gossiped, laughed, and not infrequently
quarrelled, together; there braggarts, like Lafeu in “All’s Well that
Ends Well,” “made vent of their travel”; there the latest intelligence
was circulated, the latest scandal discussed, the latest fads of fashion
displayed in all their grotesqueness. A good picture of the ordinary
during the dinner hour will be found in the twelfth chapter of Scott’s
“Fortunes of Nigel”; but the genuine atmosphere is best caught in such a
contemporary piece of writing as the “Gull’s Horn Book.”
Dinner over, with its customary game of primero, there were many ways in
which our gallant could kill time. There was the theatre, with its more
intellectual attractions; the bull-ring and the cockpit; the juggler’s
booth and the tennis-court; the shops along Cheapside and about St.
Paul’s, among which the connoisseur in letters, jewellery, and kickshaws
would find it easy enough to while away an afternoon. But however he
might pass the hours between dinner and supper, he would probably appear
in full time for the latter meal, for which he might repair to “The
Devil,” in Fleet Street, or “The Mitre,” in Cheap, or “The Mermaid,” in
Bread Street; at which last-named place he might peradventure catch
snatches of the conversation and laughter of a little group of men in
one corner, among whom we should recognize, though he might not, the
burly form and surly face of rare old Ben, and the serene countenance
and deep, clear eyes of one who is more to all of us to-day than any
other Englishman who ever lived—Will Shakspere, playwright and actor.
After that would not improbably follow the wildest episodes of the day,
which likely enough would end in deep carousal behind the flaming red
doors of a tavern, or at the gambling-table, or even in more doubtful
places of resort. When in Heywood’s “Wise Woman” old Chartley is looking
for his son, he bids his servants “inquire about the taverns,
ordinaries, bowl-alleys, tennis-courts, and gaming-houses, for there I
fear he will be found,” a direction which gives us a fair idea of the
favorite haunts of the young men of the day. Gambling particularly, in
all its forms, was one of the prevalent manias of the time, and was
often carried to such an extent that men would stake their very clothes,
and even their beards, which might be used to stuff tennis-balls. In
“Greene’s Tu Quoque” will be found a wonderfully realistic scene of a
quarrel following a dispute over the cards and dice, and ending in a
challenge for a duel. Then when the time came for him to reel homeward
through the darkness with one sleepy page to light his way with a torch,
our gallant would be either uproariously cheerful, or contentious, or
maudlin, as his habit might be when in his cups. He would bellow out
loose songs upon the night air, molest straggling by-passers, come
sometimes into conflict with the watch, and once in a while, when luck
went against him, might find himself lodged for the night in one of the
prisons of the metropolis. So the day would end; and with it must close
this part of our study. But, after all, very inadequate justice can be
done to such a theme in so brief and rapid a sketch. We must go straight
to the pages of Dekker, Greene, Nash, and Peele, if we would gain any
adequate conception of the wilder aspects of Elizabethan social life.
* * * * *