STRATFORD AS IT WAS
Stratford in Shakespeare's time administered its own affairs in very
complete fashion through the medium of a Guild, which was turned into a
Municipal Corporation by Edward VI. It boasted bailiff, aldermen,
burgesses and chamberlains, and the council met every month in the Guild
Hall. Those who accepted office were liable to be heavily mulcted for
non-attendance, for attending in mufti, for declining promotion to a
more responsible office, or for telling the secrets of the council
chamber to those who had no place in it. The Chapel of the Guild, the
Guild Hall, and the Grammar School, in which boys were taught and
disciplined in fashion that would shock our humanitarian instincts
to-day, still exist. The bailiff or warden of Stratford was at one time
John Shakespeare himself, and at another a subordinate colleague, who
would have sat in judgment upon him in the days when the old man's
liabilities were beginning to get the better of his assets, and he
himself was no longer a man of importance. The rule of the City Guild or
Corporation was paternal in an Elizabethan sense. Just as the
schoolmaster did not spare the rod lest he should spoil the child, so
the magnates of the corporation regarded their fellow-citizens as men
and women to be admonished or encouraged, punished or praised, according
to their behaviour. Food prices were fixed by the corporation; the
adulteration of the people's supplies was made exceedingly difficult and
dangerous. Men who lived ill were fined or expelled from Stratford's
boundaries; scolding wives were sentenced to have their tempers
sweetened by immersion from the ducking-stool in the clear, cold waters
of Avon. Publicans were forced to conform to the local laws carefully
framed to abolish public drunkenness. The stocks were waiting for the
feet of drunkards, brawlers, and offenders against municipal
regulations, and the whipping-post was always in evidence where the
Market House now stands. Apprentices might not be out after nine o'clock
at night. Attendance at church was obligatory, and he who blasphemed or
used foul language found ample reason to regret his indiscretion. In
short, the conduct of Stratford was of a kind more in keeping with the
Puritan tradition than anything we can find in England to-day, but it
was associated with real brotherly love, and a feeling of common
citizenship, that held the town together. Those who have studied the
early records of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community in England
in the years following the successful intercession of Manasseh ben
Israel with Oliver Cromwell, will hardly fail to note the striking
similarity between the rules that governed Elizabethan corporations and
those that governed those Jews who returned to England and lived their
prosperous but dignified lives in the east end of London when the
eighteenth century was as young as our own.
=SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE--STRATFORD-ON-AVON=
There was much to hold communities together in Elizabeth's time, much to
encourage strength of purpose and resignation to troubles that were
regarded as the manifestation of Divine Will, though in truth they were
fruits of the people's ignorance. Unfortunately there was no real
attempt to control them. Sanitation was unknown. The ground floors of
the houses were of hard clay, covered with rushes; chimneys were not
common. Refuse and garbage were placed in the open roads, not always in
the special places appointed by the corporation. Pigs were kept close to
the houses, and though the butchers were supposed to take the refuse of
the slaughter-houses beyond the town, a strong wind would doubtless
bring back infection. The corporation kept certain public places clean,
and doubtless the citizens, or the most of them, did their best; but
they had no knowledge of the price of uncleanliness, and in a town that
was unpaved, undrained, and seldom cleaned, microbes must have enjoyed
their life under conditions only familiar to those of us who have
travelled through some of the remote cities of Africa and Asia, and
known what it is to be literally unable to dismount from a horse. Street
lighting was in its early infancy. In Shakespeare's time every man of
substance was compelled to hang a lighted lantern outside his house
from dusk to curfew, during a few weeks of midwinter, and that was all.
Of all these defects the lack of cleanliness was the vital one, and the
consequences of the neglect or ignorance of the first laws of sanitation
may be imagined. Plague was never far away. Every few years there would
be a visitation, mild or severe, and there was no effective remedy known
to the people. As in the time of the great plague of London, herbs and
cooling drinks were employed, fresh air was in demand, and there was
much burning of spices. Shakespeare was a baby in arms when a visitation
of the plague gave nearly fifteen per cent. of the town's population to
the graveyard or its substitute, the plague pit.
Now and again the Avon would overflow its banks and flood the
surrounding country. Not only would such a disaster increase the ague
and rheumatism that are never far removed from dwellers by the
river-side, but a late summer flood might damage the crops on low-lying
lands, or carry away corn that had been cut but not carted, and then, as
Stratford was not readily accessible, the prices of food stuff would
rise despite the corporation's efforts, and actual famine was not
unknown.
Fires, too, were common. Doubtless a few arose from the overheating of
corn in barns and stacks, and some from the absence of chimneys to so
many houses. The corporation did what it could, but there were no
resources adequate to deal with a conflagration, for all that the Avon
ran at the foot of the town. They came to the conclusion in 1582 that
the absence of chimneys was a fruitful source of disaster, and ordered
every householder to build one. They also ordered every burgess to
provide himself with a bucket. Looking back to the times, it is not easy
to say that the corporation of Stratford was really backward; its
members did all that the people of a little town in the heart of
Warwickshire could have been expected to do, and there would seem to
have been no lack of public spirit, no falling away from continuous
endeavour, no shirking of onerous duties. Every man had his work to do
in the public service, and those who failed were punished.
When we look round at our busy manufacturing towns in this year of
grace, and remember how much we know of the best tradition of municipal
work, can we say that, _mutatis mutandis_, the advantage is altogether
with us? Plague and fire and flood have been overcome, but men and women
live lives entirely undisciplined. Little or nothing binds the citizen
to the State, and the adulteration of food has become so common that
pure bread and pure beer are the exception, and the supervision of those
who prepare the necessities of our daily life is much less strict than
it was when old John Shakespeare, the poet's father, was Stratford's
ale-taster, empowered to see, _inter alia_, that every baker sold a
whole loaf of true weight for one penny.
But if the corporation ruled Stratford strictly in Elizabethan times,
it encouraged all kinds of sport, to some of which the poet makes
reference in his plays. Young and old knew the Maypole. Nine Men's
Morris was another popular game, and Falstaff, referring to his
treatment when he escaped from Ford's house disguised as the fat woman
of Brentford, says, "Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipp'd
top, I knew not what it was to be beaten, since lately." Goose-plucking
was a particularly barbarous pastime. We know that hockey and football
were played in Elizabethan England, and that the corporation of
Stratford kept a bowling-alley at the municipality's expense for the
free use of the town. Cock-fights were among the less reputable sports
of the time, and bears or bulls were baited. Hunting, hawking, coursing,
fishing, and the rest beguiled the leisure hours of those who had any,
and the harvest festivals would have played their part. There were great
fairs and open markets held at certain seasons of spring and summer.
Within doors, cards and shovel-board would seem to have been the only
kind of amusement that were not directly associated with social
ceremonies.
Christening, marriage, and burial were all allied in the poet's time to
more public exhibitions than obtain to-day, the wedding being preceded
by a public betrothal ceremony, and the marriage itself being associated
with a great many quaint customs if the contracting parties had the
money wherewith to carry them out. Removed from touch with the outside
world, seeing little of the life of big cities for themselves, the
citizens of Stratford managed to get no small measure of simple and
harmless enjoyment out of life, though even among the town council there
were men whose liking for sack and good ale was notorious.
Players from London brought some added amusement in the summer, but as
Stratford grew more and more puritanical, a very deliberate effort,
already referred to in the preceding chapter, was made to penalise
actors, and some years after Shakespeare's death it is recorded that the
king's players were bribed by the corporation to leave the town without
giving any performances. The gardens of Stratford were very productive.
They were separated from each other by mud walls, and were carefully
cultivated. Shakespeare delighted in his gardens and his plays speak of
his sound knowledge of the gardener's craft. People who could afford to
plant orchards took a pride in doing so; the poorer folk generally
boasted a few fruit-trees, and gave no small part of their garden plot
to raising herbs and simples for use against the various ailments that
troubled them from time to time. The furniture in the house was
primitive. Table, stools, a chair or two, and a bench would furnish a
living-room. Carpets were not often met with; mattresses, bolsters, and
pillows were stuffed with feathers. Sheets and table-cloths were of flax
or hemp; dishes were of brass or pewter. Wooden trenchers and pewter
spoons were in common use, and most houses held the necessary equipment
for baking bread, brewing ale, and weaving wool. Cooking was primitive;
good cooks were not required unless the occasion was an extraordinary
one. People rose early and retired early; there was no temptation to be
out late in filthy, ill-lighted streets, and bed was the only
comfortable place in a house after nightfall. Doubtless the conditions
were favourable to deep drinking among those who were not limited to the
ale-house, and consequently could escape from the vigilant eye of
authority.
The apprentice system was in vogue at Stratford in Shakespeare's time,
and though the condition of apprentices was not always creditable to
their employers, the system ensured a thorough knowledge of any business
that a man sought to establish. The apprenticeship was a legal
condition, precedent to setting up in business, and until a lad had
fulfilled his indentures he could not open a shop on his own account or
claim the rights of a freeman. Apprentices had their rights and
privileges, including certain holidays, but they might not carry arms,
might not visit ale-houses, and might not stay out after nine o'clock.
For lads who did not care to settle down in business, or had not the
means to establish themselves in one, there were other ways of securing
a living. They could seek military service--there was always a demand
for strong, athletic young men--or they could enter the big
establishments of the great landowners, who employed scores of
retainers, and, in peaceful times, did not overwork them. The wealthier
lads went to the universities or to the metropolis, where no small
proportion, freed from all restraint, went hopelessly to the bad. In
Shakespeare's time, the Earl of Leicester, Lord Compton, Sir Thomas Lucy
of Charlecote, and a few others, were the chief men in the neighbourhood
of Stratford to keep retainers in large numbers.
=SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL THEATRE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON=