III

When we turn from France to England in, the latter part of the sixteenth

and the beginning of the seventeenth century, we are in another

atmosphere; we encounter a literature that smacks of the soil, that is as

varied, as racy, often as rude, as human life itself, and which cannot be

adequately appreciated except by a study of the popular mind and the

history of the time which produced it.

"Voltaire," says M. Guizot, "was the first person in France who spoke of

Shakespeare's genius; and although he spoke of him merely as a barbarian

genius, the French public were of the opinion that he had said too much

in his favor. Indeed, they thought it nothing less than profanation to

apply the words genius and glory to dramas which they considered as crude

as they were coarse."

Guizot was one of the first of his nation to approach Shakespeare in the

right spirit--that is, in the spirit in which he could hope for any

enlightenment; and in his admirable essay on "Shakespeare and His Times,"

he pointed out the exact way in which any piece or period of literature

should be studied, that is worth studying at all. He inquired into

English civilization, into the habits, manners, and modes of thought of

the people for whom Shakespeare wrote. This method, this inquiry into

popular sources, has been carried much further since Guizot wrote, and it

is now considered the most remunerative method, whether the object of

study is literature or politics. By it not only is the literature of a

period for the first time understood, but it is given its just place as

an exponent of human life and a monument of human action.

The student who takes up Shakespeare's plays for the purpose of either

amusement or cultivation, I would recommend to throw aside the whole load

of commentary, and speculation, and disquisition, and devote himself to

trying to find out first what was the London and the England of

Shakespeare's day, what were the usages of all classes of society, what

were the manners and the character of the people who crowded to hear his

plays, or who denounced them as the works of the devil and the allies of

sin. I say again to the student that by this means Shakespeare will

become a new thing to him, his mind will be enlarged to the purpose and

scope of the great dramatist, and more illumination will be cast upon the

plays than is received from the whole race of inquisitors into his

phrases and critics of his genius. In the light of contemporary life, its

visions of empire, its spirit of adventure, its piracy, exploration, and

warlike turmoil, its credulity and superstitious wonder at natural

phenomena, its implicit belief in the supernatural, its faith, its

virility of daring, coarseness of speech, bluntness of manner, luxury of

apparel, and ostentation of wealth, the mobility of its shifting society,

these dramas glow with a new meaning, and awaken a profounder admiration

of the poet's knowledge of human life.

The experiences of the poet began with the rude and rural life of

England, and when he passed into the presence of the court and into the

bustle of great London in an age of amazing agitation, he felt still in

his veins the throb of the popular blood. There were classic affectations

in England, there were masks and mummeries and classic puerilities at

court and in noble houses--Elizabeth's court would well have liked to be

classical, remarks Guizot--but Shakespeare was not fettered by classic

conventionalities, nor did he obey the unities, nor attempt to separate

on 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 all

things are represented, as it were, in their solid form, and in the place

which they occupied in a stormy and complicated civilization. In these

dramas the comic element is introduced whenever its character of reality

gives it the right of admission and the advantage of opportune

appearance. Falstaff appears in the train of Henry V., and Doll

Tear-Sheet in the train of Falstaff; the people surround the kings, and

the soldiers crowd around their generals; all conditions of society, all

the phases of human destiny appear by turns in juxtaposition, with the

nature which properly belongs to them, and in the position which they

naturally occupy. . . .

"Thus we find the entire world, the whole of human realities, reproduced

by Shakespeare in tragedy, which, in his eyes, was the universal theatre

of life and truth."

It is possible to make a brutal picture of the England of Shakespeare's

day by telling nothing that is not true, and by leaving out much that is

true. M. Taine, who has a theory to sustain, does it by a graphic

catalogue of details and traits that cannot be denied; only there is a

great deal in English society that he does not include, perhaps does not

apprehend. Nature, he thinks, was never so completely acted out. These

robust men give rein to all their passions, delight in the strength of

their limbs like Carmen, indulge in coarse language, undisguised

sensuality, enjoy gross jests, brutal buffooneries. Humanity is as much

lacking as decency. Blood, suffering, does not move them. The court

frequents bull and bear baitings; Elizabeth beats her maids, spits upon a

courtier's fringed coat, boxes Essex's ears; great ladies beat their

children and their servants. "The sixteenth century," he says, "is like a

den 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. If

nothing has been softened, nothing has been mutilated. It is the entire

man who is displayed, heart, mind, body, senses, with his noblest and

finest aspirations, as with his most bestial and savage appetites,

without the preponderance of any dominant passion to cast him altogether

in one direction, to exalt or degrade him. He has not become rigid as he

will under Puritanism. He is not uncrowned as in the Restoration." He has

entered like a young man into all the lusty experiences of life, every

allurement is known, the sweetness and novelty of things are strong with

him. 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 with

strange weaknesses, humble with sudden changes of mood, never vile with

premeditation like the roisterers of the Restoration, never rigid on

principle like the Puritans of the Revolution, capable of weeping like

children, and of dying like men, often base courtiers, more than once

true knights, displaying constantly, amidst all these contradictions of

bearing, only the overflowing of nature. Thus prepared, they could take

in everything, sanguinary ferocity and refined generosity, the brutality

of shameless debauchery, and the most divine innocence of love, accept

all the characters, wantons and virgins, princes and mountebanks, pass

quickly from trivial buffoonery to lyrical sublimities, listen

alternately to the quibbles of clowns and the songs of lovers. The drama

even, in order to satisfy the prolixity of their nature, must take all

tongues, pompous, inflated verse, loaded with imagery, and side by side

with this vulgar prose; more than this, it must distort its natural style

and limits, put songs, poetical devices in the discourse of courtiers and

the speeches of statesmen; bring on the stage the fairy world of opera,

as Middleton says, gnomes, nymphs of the land and sea, with their groves

and meadows; compel the gods to descend upon the stage, and hell itself

to furnish its world of marvels. No other theatre is so complicated, for

nowhere else do we find men so complete."

M. Taine heightens this picture in generalizations splashed with

innumerable blood-red details of English life and character. The English

is the most warlike race in Europe, most redoubtable in battle, most

impatient of slavery. "English savages" is what Cellini calls them; and

the great shins of beef with which they fill themselves nourish the force

and ferocity of their instincts. To harden them thoroughly, institutions

work in the same groove as nature. The nation is armed. Every man is a

soldier, bound to have arms according to his condition, to exercise

himself on Sundays and holidays. The State resembles an army; punishments

must 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, the

holiday garments, elsewhere signs of gayety of mind, are stained with

blood and bordered with black. Throughout a stern discipline, the axe

ready 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 marched

past, stretched out their necks; the Duke of Buckingham, Queen Anne

Boleyn, Queen Catherine Howard, the Earl of Surrey, Admiral Seymour, the

Duke of Somerset, Lady Jane Grey and her husband, the Duke of

Northumberland, the Earl of Essex, all on the throne, or on the steps of

the throne, in the highest ranks of honor, beauty, youth, genius; of the

bright procession nothing is left but senseless trunks, marred by the

tender mercies of the executioner."

The gibbet stands by the highways, heads of traitors and criminals grin

on the city gates. Mournful legends multiply, church-yard ghosts, walking

spirits. In the evening, before bedtime, in the vast country houses, in

the poor cottages, people talk of the coach which is seen drawn by

headless horses, with headless postilions and coachmen. All this, with

unbounded 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 at

intervals." All this riot of passion and frenzy of vigorous life, this

madness and sorrow, in which life is a phantom and destiny drives so

remorselessly, Taine finds on the stage and in the literature of the

period.

To do him justice, he finds something else, something that might give him

a hint of the innate soundness of English life in its thousands of sweet

homes, something of that great force of moral stability, in the midst of

all violence and excess of passion and performance, which makes a nation

noble. "Opposed to this band of tragic figures," which M. Taine arrays

from the dramas, "with their contorted features, brazen fronts, combative

attitudes, is a troop (he says) of timid figures, tender before

everything, the most graceful and love-worthy whom it has been given to

man to depict. In Shakespeare you will meet them in Miranda, Juliet,

Desdemona, Virginia, Ophelia, Cordelia, Imogen; but they abound also in

the others; and it is a characteristic of the race to have furnished

them, as it is of the drama to have represented them. By a singular

coincidence the women are more of women, the men more of men, here than

elsewhere. The two natures go to its extreme--in the one to boldness, the

spirit of enterprise and resistance, the warlike, imperious, and

unpolished character; in the other to sweetness, devotion, patience,

inextinguishable affection (hence the happiness and strength of the

marriage tie), a thing unknown in distant lands, and in France especially

a woman here gives herself without drawing back, and places her glory and

duty in obedience, forgiveness, adoration, wishing, and pretending only

to be melted and absorbed daily deeper and deeper in him whom she has

freely and forever chosen." This is an old German instinct. The soul in

this race is at once primitive and serious. Women are disposed to follow

the noble dream called duty. "Thus, supported by innocence and

conscience, they introduce into love a profound and upright sentiment,

abjure coquetry, vanity, and flirtation; they do not lie, they are not

affected. When they love they are not tasting a forbidden fruit, but are

binding themselves for their whole life. Thus understood, love becomes

almost a holy thing; the spectator no longer wishes to be malicious or to

jest; women do not think of their own happiness, but of that of the loved

ones; they aim not at pleasure, but at devotion."

Thus far M. Taine's brilliant antitheses--the most fascinating and most

dangerous model for a young writer. But we are indebted to him for a most

suggestive study of the period. His astonishment, the astonishment of the

Gallic mind, at what he finds, is a measure of the difference in the

literature of the two races as an expression of their life. It was

natural that he should somewhat exaggerate what he regards as the source

of this expression, leaving out of view, as he does, certain great forces

and currents which an outside observer cannot feel as the race itself

feels. We look, indeed, for the local color of this English literature in

the manners and habits of the times, traits of which Taine has so

skillfully made a mosaic from Harrison, Stubbes, Stowe, Holinshed, and

the pages of Reed and Drake; but we look for that which made it something

more than a mirror of contemporary manners, vices, and virtues, made it

representative of universal men, to other causes and forces-such as the

Reformation, the immense stir, energy, and ambition of the age (the

result of invention and discovery), newly awakened to the sense that

there was a world to be won and made tributary; that England, and, above

all places on the globe at that moment, London, was the centre of a

display of energy and adventure such as has been scarcely paralleled in

history. And underneath it all was the play of an uneasy, protesting

democracy, eager to express itself in adventure, by changing its

condition, in the joy of living and overcoming, and in literature, with

small 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 with

soldiers, adventurers, sailors who were familiar with all seas and every

port, men with projects, men with marvelous tales. It teemed with schemes

of colonization, plans of amassing wealth by trade, by commerce, by

planting, mining, fishing, and by the quick eye and the strong hand.

Swaggering in the coffee-houses and ruffling it in the streets were the

men who had sailed with Frobisher and Drake and Sir Humphrey Gilbert,

Hawkins, and Sir Richard Granville; had perhaps witnessed the heroic

death of Sir Philip Sidney, at Zutphen; had served with Raleigh in Anjou,

Picardy, Languedoc, in the Netherlands, in the Irish civil war; had taken

part in the dispersion of the Spanish Armada, and in the bombardment of

Cadiz; had filled their cups to the union of Scotland with England; had

suffered shipwreck on the Barbary Coast, or had, by the fortune of war,

felt the grip of the Spanish Inquisition; who could tell tales of the

marvels seen in new-found America and the Indies, and, perhaps, like

Captain John Smith, could mingle stories of the naive simplicity of the

natives beyond the Atlantic, with charming narratives of the wars in

Hungary, the beauties of the seraglio of the Grand Turk, and the barbaric

pomp of the Khan of Tartary. There were those in the streets who would

see Raleigh go to the block on the scaffold in Old Palace Yard, who would

fight against King Charles on the fields of Newbury or Naseby, Kineton or

Marston Moor, and perchance see the exit of Charles himself from another

scaffold erected over against the Banqueting House.

Although London at the accession of James I.(1603) had only about one

hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants--the population of England then

numbering about five million--it was so full of life and activity that

Frederick, 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 almost

every corner of the world, a very populous city, so that one can scarcely

pass along the streets on account of the throng; the inhabitants, he

says, are magnificently appareled, extremely proud and overbearing, who

scoff and laugh at foreigners, and no one dare oppose them lest the

street boys and apprentices collect together in immense crowds and strike

to right and left unmercifully without regard to persons.

There prevailed an insatiable curiosity for seeing strange sights and

hearing strange adventures, with an eager desire for visiting foreign

countries, which Shakespeare and all the play-writers satirize.

Conversation turned upon the wonderful discoveries of travelers, whose

voyages to the New World occupied much of the public attention. The

exaggeration which from love of importance inflated the narratives, the

poets also take note of. There was also a universal taste for hazard in

money as well as in travel, for putting it out on risks at exorbitant

interest, and the habit of gaming reached prodigious excess. The passion

for sudden wealth was fired by the success of the sea-rovers, news of

which inflamed the imagination. Samuel Kiechel, a merchant of Ulm, who

was in London in 1585, records that, "news arrived of a Spanish ship

captured by Drake, in which it was said there were two millions of

uncoined gold and silver in ingots, fifty thousand crowns in coined

reals, seven thousand hides, four chests of pearls, each containing two

bushels, and some sacks of cochineal--the whole valued at twenty-five

barrels of gold; it was said to be one year and a half's tribute from

Peru."

The passion for travel was at such a height that those who were unable to

accomplish distant journeys, but had only crossed over into France and

Italy, gave themselves great airs on their return. "Farewell, monsieur

traveler," says Shakespeare; "look, you lisp, and wear strange suits;

disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your

nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are,

or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola." The Londoners dearly

loved gossip, and indulged in exaggeration of speech and high-flown

compliment. One gallant says to another: "O, signior, the star that

governs my life is contentment; give me leave to interre myself in your

arms."--"Not so, sir, it is too unworthy an enclosure to contain such

preciousness!"

Dancing was the daily occupation rather than the amusement at court and

elsewhere, and the names of dances exceeded the list of the virtues--such

as the French brawl, the pavon, the measure, the canary, and many under

the general titles of corantees, jigs, galliards, and fancies. At the

dinner and ball given by James I. to Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Constable

of Castile, in 1604, fifty ladies of honor, very elegantly dressed and

extremely beautiful, danced with the noblemen and gentlemen. Prince Henry

danced a galliard with a lady, "with much sprightliness and modesty,

cutting several capers in the course of the dance"; the Earl of

Southampton led out the queen, and with three other couples danced a

brando, and so on, the Spanish visitors looking on. When Elizabeth was

old and had a wrinkled face and black teeth, she was one day discovered

practicing the dance step alone, to the sound of a fiddle, determined to

keep up to the last the limberness and agility necessary to impress

foreign ambassadors with her grace and youth. There was one custom,

however, that may have made dancing a labor of love: it was considered

ill manners for the gentleman not to kiss his partner. Indeed, in all

households and in all ranks of society the guest was expected to salute

thus all the ladies a custom which the grave Erasmus, who was in England

in the reign of Henry VIII., found not disagreeable.

Magnificence of display went hand in hand with a taste for cruel and

barbarous amusements. At this same dinner to the Constable of Castile,

the two buffets of the king and queen in the audience-chamber, where the

banquet was held, were loaded with plate of exquisite workmanship, rich

vessels of gold, agate, and other precious stones. The constable drank to

the king the health of the queen from the lid of a cup of agate of

extraordinary beauty and richness, set with diamonds and rubies, praying

his majesty would condescend to drink the toast from the cup, which he

did accordingly, and then the constable directed that the cup should

remain in his majesty's buffet. The constable also drank to the queen the

health of the king from a very beautiful dragon-shaped cup of crystal

garnished with gold, drinking from the cover, and the queen, standing up,

gave the pledge from the cup itself, and then the constable ordered that

the cup should remain in the queen's buffet.

The banquet lasted three hours, when the cloth was removed, the table was

placed upon the ground--that is, removed from the dais--and their

majesties, standing upon it, washed their hands in basins, as did the

others. After the dinner was the ball, and that ended, they took their

places at the windows of a roam that looked out upon a square, where a

platform was raised and a vast crowd was assembled to see the king's

bears fight with greyhounds. This afforded great amusement. Presently a

bull, tied to the end of a rope, was fiercely baited by dogs. After this

tumblers danced upon a rope and performed feats of agility on horseback.

The constable and his attendants were lighted home by half an hundred

halberdiers with torches, and, after the fatigues of the day, supped in

private. We are not surprised to read that on Monday, the 30th, the

constable awoke with a slight attack of lumbago.

Like Elizabeth, all her subjects were fond of the savage pastime of bear

and bull baiting. It cannot be denied that this people had a taste for

blood, took delight in brutal encounters, and drew the sword and swung

the cudgel with great promptitude; nor were they fastidious in the matter

of public executions. Kiechel says that when the criminal was driven in

the cart under the gallows, and left hanging by the neck as the cart

moved from under him, his friends and acquaintances pulled at his legs in

order that he might be strangled the sooner.

When Shakespeare was managing his theatres and writing his plays London

was full of foreigners, settled in the city, who no doubt formed part of

his audience, for they thought that English players had attained great

perfection. In 1621 there were as many as ten thousand strangers in

London, engaged in one hundred and twenty-one different trades. The poet

need not go far from Blackfriars to pick up scraps of German and

folk-lore, for the Hanse merchants were located in great numbers in the

neighborhood of the steel-yard in Lower Thames Street.

Foreigners as well as contemporary chronicles and the printed diatribes

against luxury bear witness to the profusion in all ranks of society and

the variety and richness in apparel. There was a rage for the display of

fine clothes. Elizabeth left hanging in her wardrobe above three thousand

dresses 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 of

Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and of all the dramatists,

are a perfect commentary on the fashions of the day, but a knowledge of

the fashions is necessary to a perfect enjoyment of the plays. We see the

fine lady in a gown of velvet (the foreigners thought it odd that velvet

should be worn in the street), or cloth of gold and silver tissue, her

hair eccentrically dressed, and perhaps dyed, a great hat with waving

feathers, sometimes a painted face, maybe a mask or a muffler hiding all

the features except the eyes, with a muff, silk stockings, high-heeled

shoes, imitated from the "chopine" of Venice, perfumed bracelets,

necklaces, and gloves--"gloves sweet as damask roses"--a

pocket-handkerchief wrought in gold and silver, a small looking-glass

pendant at the girdle, and a love-lock hanging wantonly over the

shoulder, artificial flowers at the corsage, and a mincing step. "These

fashionable women, when they are disappointed, dissolve into tears, weep

with one eye, laugh with the other, or, like children, laugh and cry they

can both together, and as much pity is to be taken of a woman weeping as

of a goose going barefoot," says old Burton.

The men had even greater fondness for finery. Paul Hentzner, the

Brandenburg jurist, in 1598, saw, at the Fair at St. Bartholomew, the

lord mayor, attended by twelve gorgeous aldermen, walk in a neighboring

field, dressed in a scarlet gown, and about his neck a golden chain, to

which hung a Golden Fleece. Men wore the hair long and flowing, with high

hats and plumes of feathers, and carried muffs like the women; gallants

sported gloves on their hats as tokens of ladies' favors, jewels and

roses in the ears, a long love-lock under the left ear, and gems in a

ribbon round the neck. This tall hat was called a "capatain." Vincentio,

in the "Taming of the Shrew," exclaims: "O fine villain! A silken

doublet! A velvet hose! A scarlet cloak! And a capatain hat!" There was

no limit to the caprice and extravagance. Hose and breeches of silk,

velvet, or other rich stuff, and fringed garters wrought of gold or

silver, worth five pounds apiece, are some of the items noted. Burton

says, "'Tis ordinary for a gallant to put a thousand oaks and an hundred

oxen into a suit of apparel, to wear a whole manor on his back." Even

serving-men and tailors wore jewels in their shoes.

We should note also the magnificence in the furnishing of houses, the

arras, tapestries, cloth of gold and silver, silk hangings of many

colors, the splendid plate on the tables and sideboards. Even in the

houses of the middle classes the furniture was rich and comfortable, and

there was an air of amenity in the chambers and parlors strewn with sweet

herbs and daily decked with pretty nosegays and fragrant flowers. Lights

were placed on antique candelabra, or, wanting these at suppers, there

were living candleholders. "Give me a torch," says Romeo; "I'll be a

candle-holder, and look on." Knowledge of the details of luxury of an

English home of the sixteenth century will make exceedingly vivid hosts

of allusions in Shakespeare.

Servants were numerous in great households, a large retinue being a mark

of gentility, and hospitality was unbounded. During the lord mayor's term

in London he kept open house, and every day any stranger or foreigner

could dine at his table, if he could find an empty seat. Dinner, served

at eleven in the early years of James, attained a degree of epicureanism

rivaling dinners of the present day, although the guests ate with their

fingers or their knives, forks not coming in till 1611. There was mighty

eating and swigging at the banquets, and carousing was carried to an

extravagant height, if we may judge by the account of an orgy at the

king's palace in 1606, for the delectation of the King and Queen of

Denmark, when the company and even their majesties abandoned discretion

and sobriety, and "the ladies are seen to roll about in intoxication."

The manners of the male population of the period, says Nathan Drake, seem

to have been compounded from the characters of the two sovereigns. Like

Elizabeth, they are brave, magnanimous, and prudent; and sometimes, like

James, they are credulous, curious, and dissipated. The credulity and

superstition of the age, and its belief in the supernatural, and the

sumptuousness of masques and pageants at the court and in the city, of

which we read so much in the old chronicles, are abundantly reflected in

the pages of Jonson, Shakespeare, and other writers.

The town was full of public-houses and pleasure-gardens, but, curiously

enough, the favorite place of public parading was the middle aisle of St.

Paul's Cathedral--"Paul's Walk," as it was called--which was daily

frequented by nobles, gentry, perfumed gallants, and ladies, from ten to

twelve and three to six o'clock, to talk on business, politics, or

pleasure. Hither came, to acquire the fashions, make assignations,

arrange for the night's gaming, or shun the bailiff, the gallant, the

gamester, the ladies whose dresses were better than their manners, the

stale knight, the captain out of service. Here Falstaff purchased

Bardolph. "I bought him," say's the knight, "at Paul's." The tailors went

there 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 very

altar 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 fine

folk that is reflected in the English drama and literature of the

seventeenth century, and here is another wide difference between it and

the French literature of the same period; rural England and the popular

life of the country had quite as much to do in giving tone and color to

the writings of the time. It is necessary to know rural England to enter

into the spirit of this literature, and to appreciate how thoroughly it

took hold of life in every phase. Shakespeare knew it well. He drew from

life the country gentleman, the squire, the parson, the pedantic

schoolmaster who was regarded as half conjurer, the yeoman or farmer, the

dairy maids, the sweet English girls, the country louts, shepherds,

boors, and fools. How he loved a fool! He had talked with all these

persons, and knew their speeches and humors. He had taken part in the

country festivals-May Day, Plow Monday, the Sheep Shearing, the Morris

Dances and Maud Marian, the Harvest Home and Twelfth Night. The rustic

merrymakings, the feasts in great halls, the games on the greensward, the

love of wonders and of marvelous tales, the regard for portents, the

naive superstitions of the time pass before us in his pages. Drake, in

his "Shakespeare and his Times," gives a graphic and indeed charming

picture of the rural life of this century, drawn from Harrison and other

sources.

In his spacious hall, floored with stones and lighted by large transom

windows, hung with coats of mail and helmets, and all military

accoutrements, long a prey to rust, the country squire, seated at a

raised table at one end, held a baronial state and dispensed prodigal

hospitality. The long table was divided into upper and lower messes by a

huge salt-cellar; and the consequence of the guests was marked by their

seats above or below the salt. The distinction extended to the fare, for

wine frequently circulated only above the salt, and below it the food was

of coarser quality. The literature of the time is full of allusions to

this distinction. But the luxury of the table and good cooking were well

understood in the time of Elizabeth and James. There was massive eating

done in those days, when the guests dined at eleven, rose from the

banquet to go to evening prayers, and returned to a supper at five or

six, 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, and

not empty, or for shew--as thus, for example: first, a shield of brawn

with 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 goose

rosted; ninthly, a swan rosted; tenthly, a turkey rosted; the eleventh, a

haunch of venison rosted; the twelfth, a pasty of venison; the

thirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the belly; the fourteenth, an

olive-pye; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the sixteenth, a custard or

dowsets. Now to these full dishes may be added sallets, fricases,

'quelque choses,' and devised paste; as many dishes more as will make no

less than two and thirty dishes, which is as much as can conveniently

stand on one table, and in one mess; and after this manner you may

proportion both your second and third course, holding fullness on one

half the dishes, and shew in the other, which will be both frugal in the

splendor, contentment to the guest, and much pleasure and delight to the

beholders." After this frugal repast it needed an interval of prayers

before supper.

The country squire was a long-lived but not always an intellectual

animal. He kept hawks of all kinds, and all sorts of hounds that ran

buck, fox, hare, otter, and badger. His great hall was commonly strewn

with marrow-bones, and full of hawks' perches, of hounds, spaniels, and

terriers. His oyster-table stood at one end of the room, and oysters he

ate at dinner and supper. At the upper end of the room stood a small

table with a double desk, one side of which held a church Bible, the

other Fox's "Book of Martyrs." He drank a glass or two of wine at his

meals, put syrup of gilly-flower in his sack, and always had a tun-glass

of small beer standing by him, which he often stirred about with

rosemary. After dinner, with a glass of ale by his side he improved his

mind by listening to the reading of a choice passage out of the "Book of

Martyrs."

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 nor

used spectacles. He got on horseback without help, and rode to the death

of the stag till he was past fourscore.

The plain country fellow, plowman, or clown, is several pegs lower, and

described by Bishop Earle as one that manures his ground well, but lets

himself lie fallow and untitled. His hand guides the plow, and the plow

his thoughts. His mind is not much disturbed by objects, but he can fix a

half-hour's contemplation on a good fat cow. His habitation is under a

poor thatched roof, distinguished from his barn only by loop-holes that

let out the smoke. Dinner is serious work, for he sweats at it as much as

at his labor, and he is a terrible fastener on a piece of beef. His

religion is a part of his copyhold, which he takes from his landlord and

refers it wholly to his discretion, but he is a good Christian in his

way, that is, he comes to church in his best clothes, where he is capable

only 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 Sir

Hugh, in the "Merry Wives," Sir Topas, in "Twelfth Night," Sir Oliver, in

"As You Like It." The distinction is marked between priesthood and

knighthood when Vista says, "I am one that would rather go with Sir

Priest than Sir Knight." The clergy were not models of conduct in the

days of Elizabeth, but their position excites little wonder when we read

that they were often paid less than the cook and the minstrel.

There was great fondness in cottage and hall for merry tales of errant

knights, lovers, lords, ladies, dwarfs, friars, thieves, witches,

goblins, for old stories told by the fireside, with a toast of ale on the

hearth, as in Milton's allusion

"---to the nut-brown ale,

With stories told of many a feat"