ELIZABETHAN LONDON
Shortly after Shakespeare came to London, England demonstrated her new
greatness to an astonished world; by the defeat of Spain's greatest
fleet, the "invincible Armada," England showed herself as no longer a
small island nation, but as Mistress of the Sea. In this victory
culminated the growth which had begun under Henry VII, first of Tudor
sovereigns. Naval supremacy was, however, but a sign of a much greater
and more far-reaching transformation--a transformation which had
affected science, literature, and religion, and one which filled the
men of Shakespeare's time with such enthusiasm for the past, such
confidence in the present, and such hope for the future, as has hardly
been paralleled in the world's history.
During the century which had elapsed since 1485, Copernicus's discovery
that the sun and not the earth was the center of our universe, had
revolutionized the map of the heavens, as Columbus's discovery of
America had revolutionized the map of the world. Thus stimulated,
scientific investigation started afresh, working in accordance with the
modern methods formulated by Francis Bacon, while voyage quickly
followed voyage, each new discovery adding fuel to the fire of
enthusiasm. Wonderful tales of new lands and unimagined wealth spread
from mouth to mouth. The voyages {52} of Martin Frobisher, Anthony
Hawkins, and Francis Drake opened new worlds, not only to English
imagination, but also to English trade. It was they and men like them
who gave to England her unexpected naval and commercial supremacy.
The latter was partly a result of the former. Elizabeth's victories
over foreign enemies strengthened her power at home, and assured that
freedom from internal discord which is essential to commercial
prosperity. No sovereign distracted by danger from without could have
mastered the factions which had sprung up within. The great religious
movement known as the Protestant Reformation had not stopped in England
with the separation of the English from the Roman Church under Henry
VIII. It had brought into existence the Puritan, austere, bigoted,
opposed to beauty of church and ceremonial, yet filled with superb
moral and religious enthusiasm. It had brought about the persecution
of Catholics and the still more merciless persecution of Protestants
during the Catholic reaction under Queen Mary. Its successes, which
began again with Elizabeth's reign, gave occasion for continual
intrigues of Catholic emissaries. It all but plunged the nation into
civil war, a war averted only by the victory over Spain and by the
statesmanship of Elizabeth. Freed from the fear of war, however,
Puritan and Churchman, each in his own way, could apply his enthusiasm
to the works of peace.
With the return of peace and security, moreover, England first felt the
full effect of the literary Renaissance. The revival of classical
learning had already transformed the art and literature of the
continent, {53} especially that of Italy. When, therefore, England
turned again to the classics, it turned also to the Italian culture and
literature to which the Renaissance had given birth, and from these
sources English literature received new beauty of thought and form.
It was, then, in a new England that Shakespeare lived, an England
intensely proud of the past which had made the present possible, an
England rich enough and secure enough to have leisure and interest for
literature, an England so vigorous, so confident, that it could not
fail to bring out all that was latent in its greatest genius.
+The City of London+.--All this enthusiasm and activity reached its
highest point in London. Even more then than now, London was the
center of influence, the place to which the greatest abilities were
irresistibly attracted, and in which their greatest work was done. But
the London of Shakespeare's time was vastly different from the London
of to-day. On all sides, except that washed by the Thames, the
mediaeval walls were still standing and served as the city's actual
boundary. Outside them were several important suburbs, but where now
houses extend for miles in unbroken ranks, there were then open fields
and pleasant woods. The total population of the city hardly exceeded a
hundred thousand, while that of the suburbs, including the many guests
of the numerous inns, amounted to perhaps a hundred thousand more.
Hence, although there undoubtedly was crowding in the poorer quarters,
London was a much more open city than it is to-day. The great houses
all had their gardens, and a few minutes walk in any direction brought
one to open country.
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Westminster, now well within the greater London, was then only the most
important suburb. Here was the Hall in which Parliament met, and, not
far away, Whitehall, the favorite London residence of the Queen.
Attracted by the presence of royalty, many of the great nobles had
built their houses in this quarter, so that the north bank of the
Thames from Westminster to the City was lined with stately buildings.
The Thames was London's pleasantest highway. It was then a clear,
beautiful river spanned by a single bridge. If one wished to go from
the City to Westminster, or even eastward or westward within the City
itself, one could go most easily by boat. The Queen in her royal barge
was often to be seen on the river. The great merchant companies had
their splendid barges, in which they made stately progresses. One went
by boat to the bear gardens and theaters on the south bank. Below the
bridge, the river was crowded with shipping. At one of the wharves lay
an object of universal interest, the _Golden Hind_, the ship in which
Drake had made his famous voyage round the world.
Within the city, most of the streets were narrow, poorly paved, and
worse lighted. Those who went about by night had their servants carry
torches, called "links," before them, or hired boys to light them home.
Such sanitation as existed was wretched, so that plagues and other
diseases spread rapidly and carried off an appalling number of victims.
The ignorance and inefficiency of the police is rather portrayed than
satirized in Shakespeare's Dogberry and Verges. Such evils were common
to all seventeenth-century cities, but these cities had their
compensations in a freedom {55} and picturesqueness which have
disappeared from our modern towns.
+The Citizens+.--In Elizabethan London, as in every city, the men who
represented extremes of wealth and poverty, the courtiers and their
imitators, the beggars and the sharpers, are those of whom we hear
most; but the greater part of the population, that which controlled the
city government, was of the middle class, sober, self-respecting
tradespeople, inclined towards Puritanism, and jealous of their
independence. Such people naturally distrusted and disliked the actors
and their class, and used against them, as far as they could, the great
authority of the city. In spite of court favor, the actors were
compelled by city ordinances to build their theaters outside the city
limits or on ground which the city did not control. Several attempts
were made to suppress play acting altogether, ostensibly because of the
danger that crowded audiences would spread the plague when it became
epidemic. In spite of this official opposition, however, the sober
citizens formed a goodly part of theater audiences until after the
accession of King James, when the rising tide of Puritanism led to
increased austerity. At no time were the majority of the citizens
entirely free from a love for worldly pleasures. They swelled the
crowds at the taverns, and their wives often vied with the great ladies
of court in extravagance of dress.
+St. Paul's+.--The great meeting place of London was, oddly enough, the
nave of St. Paul's Cathedral. This superb Gothic church, later
destroyed by the Great Fire, was used as a common passageway, as a
place for doing business and for meeting friends. In {56} the late
morning hours, the men-about-town promenaded there, displaying their
gorgeous clothes and hailing those whom they wished to have known as
their acquaintances. If a gallant's cash were at low ebb, he loitered
there, hoping for an invitation to dinner. If he had had a dinner, he
often came back for another stroll in the afternoon. At one pillar he
would find lawyers standing; at another, serving men seeking
employment; at still another, public secretaries. Here one could learn
anything from the latest fashion to the latest political scandal.
Meanwhile, divine worship might be going on in the chancel, unobserved
unless some fop wished to make himself conspicuous by joking with the
choir boys. Thus St. Paul's was a school of life invaluable to the
dramatist. We know that Ben Jonson learned much there, and we can
hardly doubt that Shakespeare did likewise.
+The Taverns+.--Another center of London life was the tavern. The man
who would now lunch at his club then dined at an 'ordinary,' a _table
d'hote_ in some tavern. Men dined at noon, and then sat on over their
wine, smoking or playing at cards or dice. In the evening one could
always find there music and good company. One tradition of Shakespeare
tells of his evenings at the Mermaid tavern. "Many were the
wit-combates," writes Fuller, "betwixt him [Shakespeare] and Ben
Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great gallion, and an English
man of War; Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in
Learning; Solid, but Slow in his performances. Shake-spear, with the
English man-of-War, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn
with all tides, {57} tack about and take advantage of all winds, by the
quickness of his Wit and Invention." Francis Beaumont, the dramatist,
wrote the following verses to Ben Jonson:--
"What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid, heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if everyone from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown
Wit able enough to justify the town
For three days past; wit that might warrant be
For the whole city to talk foolishly
Till that were cancelled; and when that was gone,
We left an air behind us, which alone
Was able to make the two next companies
(Right witty, though but downright fools) more wise."
+At the Theater+.--Having dined, the Elizabethan gentleman often
visited one of the numerous bookshops, or else went to the theater,
perhaps to the Globe. In the latter case, since this theater was on
the south bank of the Thames, he was most likely to cross the river by
boat. A flag, floating from a turret over the theater, announced a
performance there. The prices paid for admission varied, but the
regular price for entrance to the Globe seems to have been a penny
(about fifteen cents in the money of to-day). This, however, gave one
only the right to stand in the pit or, perhaps, to sit in the top
gallery. For a box the price was probably a shilling (equivalent to
two dollars), the poorer seats costing less. At the aristocratic
Blackfriars, sixpence (one dollar) was the {58} lowest price. At this
theater, the most fashionable occupied seats on the stage, where they
were at once extremely conspicuous and in the way of the actors; but
this custom probably did not spread to the Globe before 1603. At the
Blackfriars, too, one could have a seat in the pit, while at the Globe
the pit was filled with a standing, jostling crowd of apprentices and
riffraff. In the theater every one was talking, laughing, smoking,
buying oranges, nuts, wine, or cheap books from shouting venders, just
as is done in some music halls to-day. Once the trumpet had sounded
for the third time, indicating the beginning of the performance, a
reasonable degree of quiet was restored, until a pause in the action
let the uproar burst forth anew. At an Elizabethan theater there were
no pauses for shifting scenes. Consequently the few introduced were
determined either by convention or by breaks in the action. At the
Blackfriars and more aristocratic theaters, there was music between the
acts, but at the Globe this was not customary until a comparatively
late date, if ever.
An audience like that at the Globe, made up of all sorts and conditions
of men from the highest nobility to the lowest criminal, was, quite
naturally, not easy to please as a whole. Yet, after all, the
Elizabethans were less critical in some respects than we are. Although
many comparatively cheap books were published, reading had not then
become a habit, and a good plot was not the less appreciated because it
was old. The audiences did, however, demand constant variety, so that
plays had short runs, and most dramatists were forced to pay more
attention to quantity {59} than to quality of production. The
playwrights had, nevertheless, one great advantage over ours. Since
the performances were given in the afternoon, and since theaters like
the Globe were open to the weather, these men wrote for audiences which
were fresh and wide-awake, ready to receive the best which the
dramatist had to give.
It was under such conditions as these that Shakespeare worked. He
wrote for all classes of people, men bound together, nevertheless, by a
common enthusiasm for England's past and a common confidence in
England's future; men who were constantly coming in contact with
persons from all parts of Europe, with sailors and travelers who had
seen the wonders of the New World and the Old; men so stimulated by new
discoveries, by new achievements of every sort, that hardly anything,
even the supernatural, seemed for them impossible. Outside of ancient
Athens, no dramatist has had a more favorable environment.
The best books on this subject for the general reader: Sir Walter
Besant, _London in the Time of the Tudors_ (London, 1904); H. T.
Stephenson, _Shakespeare's London_ (Henry Holt, 1905); T. F. Ordish,
_Shakespeare's London_ (The Temple Shakespeare Manuals, 1897).
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