Shakespeare and his days: a study of the topical element in Shakespeare and in the Elizabethan drama

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

Class

Shakespeare and His Day

A STUDY OF THE

TOPICAL ELEMENT IN SHAKESPEARE
AND IN THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA

tije J^anujss $rt?e <£g0ag, 1901

BY

J. A. DE ROTHSCHILD

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

LONDON

EDWARD ARNOLD

41 AND 43 MADDOX STREET, BOND STREET, W.
1906

C-ENEfiAL

TO THOSE OF MY FRIENDS
WHO WILL READ IT

DEDICATE
THIS BOOK

< When Shakespeare, Jonson, Fletcher, ruled the stage,
They took so bold a freedom with the age,
That there was scarce a knave or fool in town
Of any note but had his picture down.1

SIR CHARLES SCROPE before 1680.

'Many of our Shakespeare's plays, you know, are
founded upon authenticated facts.'

STERNE, Tristram Shandy.

FOREWORD

IN writing the following pages an attempt has
been made to extract from the Elizabethan drama
something of Elizabethan life. There is no
field perhaps that could offer a wealthier fund
of Elizabethan remains than the contemporary
drama. Grey piles stand here and there to
remind one of the past ; but more eloquent than
masonry is the literature of that time, and the
spirit it enshrines is, after all, the finest link
with those days.

What has been done will doubtless partake of
the limitations of an essay on a set subject ; and yet
it is hoped that the result will neither be devoid
of interest, nor without its uses for purposes
of study. The treatment is obviously far from
exhaustive on a subject which opens up so many

vi SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

vistas and ranges over so long a period. If but
some few nooks and corners of the Elizabethan
background have been lit up in the process, it
is felt that the undertaking will in some measure
have justified itself.

The scheme of the work is briefly this : in the
first place, to shadow forth some of the Elizabethan
personalities and events ; and, secondly, to evolve
something of the general colours and forms of
Shakespeare's times. The creator of Falstaff has
therefore been taken as the main subject of
investigation ; his fellow-dramatists have merely
supplied subsidiary detail.

It is believed that the picture produced by
these allusions massed together represents work
of an independent character ; but for some of
the particular points, dealing with definite per-
sonages or events, indebtedness must be acknow-
ledged to Dr. Ward's History of English Dramatic
Literature, to a paper by Mr. Sidney Lee in the
Gentleman s Magazine, 1880, as well as to certain
of the contributions made to the Transactions of

FOREWORD vii

the New Shakespeare Society. The opportunity
of so doing is here gladly taken, as also of thank-
ing a friend, who wishes to remain nameless, for
his kindness in reading the proofs and in suggest-
ing certain valuable alterations.

LONDON, April 1906.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGES

ON THE PRESENCE OF A TOPICAL ELEMENT

IN THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA, . . . 1-25

The topical element in the Greek drama, i. — Its
presence in the Elizabethan drama ; evidence of con-
temporaries, 5 $ of the dramatists, 9. — Evidence of a
more indirect character, 13. — Comparison of the Eliza-
bethan with the modern stage in this respect, 18. —
Conclusion, 25.

CHAPTER II

ON PARTICULAR ALLUSIONS OF THE ELIZA-
BETHAN STAGE, . . 26-99

Allusions, particular and general, 26. — I. Allusions to
Elizabeth^ 29 j II. to James /., 395 III. to the Court ,
45 j to Essex, 46 ; Leicester, 48 j Burleigh, Southamp-
ton, Sidney, Pembroke, 49 j Arabella Stuart, 52 $ IV.
to fellow-dramatists , 53. — The Jonson, Marston, and
Dekker dispute, 53. — Shakespeare's part in it, 58. —
Allusions to Shakespeare, 63 ; to Jonson and Marlowe, 675
Greene, 68 5 Lodge and Spenser, 69 ; Nash and Marston,
70 j Holinshed, Fletcher, and Beaumont, 715 to con-

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

FACES

temporary actors, 72 j V. to other contemporaries:
Stukely, Roderigo Lopez, 74. — The Welsh Sir Hugh,
75. — Drake and the Armada, 76. — Sir Thomas Lucy,
77. — Phantasticall Monarcho, 78. — The brothers Shirley,
79. — Sir Thomas Gresham and Hobson, 80. — Garnet
the Jesuit, Bankes the showman, and the old woman of
Brentford, 81. — Mary Frith, 82. — VI. Contemporary
incidents: Derby's wedding festivities, 83. — The Gowrie
Conspiracy, 84. — Creation of children-actors, 84. —
Summers' voyage to Virginia, 85. — Raleigh's explora-
tions, and the Statute of the Streets, 87. — Privy Council's
order j Poor Law, 1601, 88. — Earthquake, 88. — Mov-
able topmast, and new map, 89. — Overbury murder, 90.
— VII. Foreign events and personalities, 91.

CHAPTER III

ON THE GENERAL ALLUSIONS OF THE ELIZA-

BETH AN STAGE, 100-236

The general allusion, 100. — I. Reflections of Country
life, 105 j hawking, hunting, angling, 114; archery, u8j
rustic festivals, 120. — II. London life, 125 $ place-names,
128 $ manners and affectations of London gallants, 129 j
ladies' manners and fashions, 141 ; sports and pastimes,
145 j tobacco-smoking, 147 $ places of public resort,
149; tavern- scenes, 154; prisons, 159; beggars, and
the watch, 162. — III. Professional life, 167$ medical
matters, 168 ; legal matters, 1705 teachers and schools,
1725 the Universities, 175; military matters, 177$
adventurers and travellers, 1815 newsvenders, 185$
tradesmen, 186. — IV. Home-life, 189; interior of royal

CONTENTS xi

PAGES

halls, 1895 feasts and meals, 195. — V. Theatres, 202;
reflection of the earlier stage, 203 j the actor, 206 $ the
audience and its behaviour, 2105 staging, 212; abuses,
215, — VI. Religion, etc., 2195 Puritans, 221; supersti-
tion, 225 j legends, astrology, 227 ; witches, 228 ;
alchemists, 231 j fairyland, 233.

ENVOY, 237-251

Topical reflections on the drama correspond to
national changes, 238. — Shakespeare's topical allusions
afford no clue to his earlier profession, 242. — The light
they afford as to the chronology of his plays, 244. —
Artistic importance of the topical allusion, 249. —
Conclusion, 251.

OFTHF

UNIVERSITY

OF

CHAPTER I

ON THE PRESENCE OF A TOPICAL ELEMENT
IN THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA

' Whatever is truly great and affecting must have on it the strong
stamp of the native land.'' — J. RUSKIN.

' WITH Plato and Aristophanes for our guides
we can, to some extent, reconstruct the life of the
Athenians.'1 So wrote a modern critic well quali-
fied to speak on the Art of ancient Greece. And
this truth was no product of modern insight. It
was one that was recognised as far back as Plato's
own day.

Dionysius of Syracuse once wrote to that
cultured Athenian philosopher for enlightenment
on Athenian politics, and in reply a papyrus of
Aristophanes' Clouds was sent. Plato recognised
that this first great votary of the Comic Muse
had found his inspiration not only in the im-
broglio of farcical situation, but in the details of
contemporary life as well ; and so the comedy was
sent to supply the tyrant with what he wished.
Had he possessed himself of more of the Aristo-

1 See Studies of the Greek Poets, J. A. Symonds, ii. 194.
A

2 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

phanic papyrus he would have had his picture of
Athens and of the things of Athens enlarged in
no small degree, so unsparingly did those comedies
reflect the life from which they sprang. He
would have beheld the profligacy of the rising
generation to whom the Sophists were more than
their Homer. He would have caught an echo of
the hateful litigation and baneful rhetoric which
sounded so discordant in that home of the beauti-
ful. He might have read of the time's social
licence, its ambitions, its credulity ; have caught
glimpses of the Parthenon, the Pnyx, and the law-
courts, or else have seen how people slept, and
walked, and dressed, and dined, in those days at
Athens. All this might the comedies of Aristo-
phanes have done for him.

But the reflection of the age was not a mono-
poly that had been vested with one man or with
one institution, with Aristophanes, or with the
Comic Stage. The Athenian drama was a many-
faceted jewel. Its rays sometimes were shot with
comic gleams caught from the light of common
day. But elsewhere they threw back the colours
and shadows of the life that throbbed around,
just as the Parthenon marbles took colour and
shade from the blue above.

When the little Republic was heaving with
pride over Salamis and its mighty deeds, ^Eschylus
broke out in his Persae into a long chant of praise

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 3

and thanksgiving. ' No monarch have they, few
are they, but all men of might,' sang he who
wrote the Agamemnon. And so was enshrined
for all time, the mighty spirit that fought at
Marathon and again at Salamis. Nor was this
an isolated outburst of Attic patriotism. Mos-
chion's ^hemistocles had swelled with the same
chant, and scattered up and down through the
Athenian drama lie numerous utterances of the
same wild spirit. Thus did Tragedy preserve
some scenes from the great Grecian gallery, just as
Comedy had appropriated others. But Tragedy
in its stately way could also embody the moral
conscience of the Grecian race, and speak what
Grecian hearts felt, both of Time and of ' the
undiscovered country.' Tragedy no less than
Comedy could shoot at flying Folly and hold up
Grecian weakness. It could panegyrise the Greek
athlete. It could also condemn him. He was
* a beauty bright/ or else merely ' a town orna-
ment/ c one of the thousand ills that preyed on
Hellas.' * Tragedy could commend in glowing
words the Stoicism of the day. It could damn
with equal fire the Hedonism that spent its days
in feast and song. Together with Comedy it
could reflect the softer aspect of the Attic soul,
and gently touch the Graces into life. Both
could pile up in words the statues they saw around.

1 Cf. Studies of the Greek Poets, J. A. Symonds, passim.

4 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

Each could paint the Attic sylvan scene — the
ivy-clad swallow haunt, the tangled violets beside
quiet wells, and dreamy olives so dear to Grecian
heart. They could paint every scene, and place
them among the things that never die. Not even
the poplar-trees with shivering tops, that lined the
streets of Athens, were wanting in the great
picture that came into being as the drama grew—
the picture that gathered strength with every
stroke of the dramatic pen. For an immense
canvas the Grecian drama must needs be held to
be. It was a picture worked out in detail, of all
the forms and fashions of Greek life : here ruddy
with lofty passion, there drab with the wearying
commonplace ; silver-soft with Attic loveliness,
or rough and harsh with Spartan tones.

If then, with Plato and Aristophanes for guides,
it is possible in some degree to reconstruct the
life of the Athenians, with the help of the whole
Attic stage a countless multitude of further
details can be added, and a creation in part can
thus be made a thing of more completeness.

How far can a parallel to all this be found in
the case of the Elizabethan drama ? With what
degree of truth can it be said that with Shakespeare
and his fellows for our guides, we can reconstruct
the Elizabethan age? The conditions of the
respective ages were not without their points of
contact. Both were times of great national up-

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 5

lifting ; times when the gods above were filling
the hearts and minds of men with Titanic fire and
energy, and when, as it were, new civilisations,
dawning on the world, were lighting it step by
step along the road to its Olympic destiny.

But whatever the probability as to a parallel,
one thing is certain. The Elizabethans them-
selves knew that, woven in the texture of the
drama, were to be found many shreds drawn from
the life around. Like Plato they saw that con-
temporary events and contemporary personalities
were being constantly alluded to on the stage ;
and this testimony from its very nature is the
most weighty that could possibly be adduced.

' Everie stage-plaier,' wrote one Elizabethan,
1 made a jest of Martin Marprelate ' ; while quoth
another, speaking of the same notoriety, ' They
made of him a very May-game on the stage.' l
The Anglicans hit out at Martin, Martin at the
Anglicans. It is not so wonderful that some of
their dust kept falling on the stage. Nor indeed
do the above remarks indicate any wonder on the
part of contemporaries at the incidents when they
happened. The facts are merely stated.

Spenser seems to have gone part of the way
towards making the same assertion. In his 'Tears
of the Muses, he wails over the degraded drama,
and laments the c vaine toyes ' with which the

1 See also Dr. Ward's English Dramatic Literature, i. 465-6.

6 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

vulgar were entertained. The lament is only
general, it is true. But it would have been
signally applicable to the actions of the players in
mingling gossip and scandal with their Art, and
in taking part in as rude a controversy as ever
lowered the dignity of a literary tribe.

Nor were the authorities blind to the stage's
activity in this direction ; least of all when it
busied itself with matters of statecraft. Already
in 1554 the bishops are reproached for vexing
and troubling ' the poor minstrels and players of
interludes/ who found no favour with the clergy,
' since they persuaded the people to worship the
Lord aright ' * and not on the lines of episcopalian
dictation. In 1574 the Lord Mayor was under
the necessity of petitioning for a Censorship of
Plays. Fifteen years later plays were ' stayed/
doubtless as a result of censorship ; and if The
Tragedy of Cowrie, stayed in 1604, be taken as
a specimen, such plays were evidently forbidden,
when their political tendencies were too pronounced,
or when they discussed questions connected with
the State. On the evidence therefore of the staying
of the plays, and from the likelihood of their pro-
hibition being caused by their topical tendencies,
it must be inferred that, as early as 1590, some
plays had overstepped the limits of topical licence,
and had spoken too plainly on matters of contem-
porary interest.

1 Epistle by Henry Stalbrydge.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 7

The Queen, who crushed prophesyings, also
launched a decree forbidding plays to be acted
' wherein either matters of religion or governance
of the State should be handled or treated.' But
the ' stage-plaier ' was hardly repressed, and Eliza-
beth had to speak in angrier tones, to forbid in
plain terms ' the utterance of popular, busy, and
seditious matter ' on the stage.

Corroboration of this ' business ' of the theatre
comes, too, from sources less elevated. c The
players,' wrote one Calvert in a private letter of
1604, ' do not forbear to present upon the stage
the whole course of the present time,' and he
added that they spared neither ' the King, the
State, or religion.' According to another contem-
porary,1 they were wont to inveigh against the
State and the Court, the Law, the City, and their
Governments. And as if the intellectual grasp of
the ' plaier ' did not find ' the whole course of
that present English time ' a sufficient whetstone
for his wit, evidence of his further activity was at
hand from over the Channel. For about the
same date, the French ambassador complains
somewhat testily to the authorities at Paris, of
the liberties taken by the English stage with
certain notable events of contemporary French
history. So that, apparently, nothing of contem-
porary note lay outside the dramatic range.

Perhaps more eloquent than all these complaints

1 Cf. Hey wood, Apology for Actors (1612).

8 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

and prohibitions, however, was the action of the
Government in imprisoning three of the most
popular playwrights for offence given by alluding
on the stage to one of Scottish extraction, high in
Royal esteem. Chapman and Marston had in-
serted in their comedy, Eastward Hoe, notices of
public matter couched ' in wicked and libellous
vein ' ; and for this they suffered, and Jonson with
them. Further official action was taken against
Jonson when he was called before the Council to
answer for his Sejanus.1 Sir John Yorke was also
fined by the Star Chamber for having allowed a
play to be acted in his house embodying * many
foul passages to the vilifying of our religion/
And later still, Middleton was imprisoned for his
flagrantly topical Game of Chesse. So that the
authorities were painfully convinced of the evi-
dence of the topical element on the stage.

But at times such allusions found grace in the
official eye. As a rule, those at the head of
affairs disliked the holding up of matters of high
import for the approval or disapproval of the
' many-headed.' Circumstances, however, could
arise in which those who ought to have seen, would
be diplomatically preoccupied, and would possess
no eye for this class of delinquency. A case in
point arose in 1592, when certain players were
suffered to jest at Philip of Spain, ' in order to

1 See Jonson's Conversations with Drummond.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 9

make him odious unto the people.' 1 The law
again winked conveniently when James of Scotland
was known to be making overtures to the odious
Philip. Unpleasant allusions were certainly made
at this time to the Scottish monarch, whose faulty
diplomacy had brought him under England's
frown ; for news came post-haste from Edinburgh
of the displeasure with which James had heard of
the personal topic employed at that time by the
London comedians.2

To the Elizabethan mind, then, the abiding pre-
sence of allusive matter on the contemporary
stage was beyond dispute. It had won alike the
Royal frown and the Royal approval. It had
been the subject of mild remark between mild
correspondents. It had amused the groundlings,
imprisoned dramatists, and stung foreign digni-
taries into making protestations.

If further proof were needed that the Eliza-
bethan age found its reflection on the contem-
porary stage, it would be visible in the statements of
the dramatists themselves, in the titles of some of
their plays, in the existence of certain allusions
of a character beyond dispute, embedded here and
there in these plays, and in certain other consider-
ations to be mentioned hereafter.

1 Verstegen (1592).

2 Cf. Letter from John Chamberlaine to Winwood (i8th Dec.
1604). Cam. Soc., 1861.

io SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

The dramatists were evidently of opinion that
it lay within their province, that it was inevitably
connected with their craft — this use of the topical
device.

Shakespeare is explicit. The ' purpose of
playing ' was to show the time ' his form and
pressure.' l His actors were to be ' the abstract or
brief chronicles of the time.'2 And these were
principles which his plays illustrated, to a degree
perhaps not altogether suspected by the great
dramatist himself.

Lyly was consistently inexplicit ; but he seems
to hint at the same intention. He who lived in
allegory and breathed Euphuism, had still to
retain a touch of mystery even when he would be
making a confidence. * There liveth none under
the sun/ he wrote in his Prologue to Endymion,
' that knoweth what to make of the Man in the
Moon.' But apparently there lived those who
thought they could ; and who could, withal, only
read an unpleasant interpretation into it. At all
events, in the Epilogue to the same play he had
already found it convenient to claim the Queen's
protection against 'the malicious that sought to
overthrow him with threats.' The sound of
cudgels seems to lurk behind the lines — the
cudgels of offended personality. And it seems
therefore to be no far-fetched conclusion, that

1 Hamlet, in. ii. 21. 2 Ibid., 11. ii. 530.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY n

Lyly had shadowed forth in the play some
domestic or political drama of the day, and that
his careless chuckle in the Prologue was nothing
less than a covert statement to his age of this
underlying intention, of which he lived to repent
him — as early as the Epilogue.

Of further significant utterances by the drama-
tists, there is one by Jonson. Nothing probably
points more conclusively to a vogue than its
caricature. And when the author of Bartholomew
Fair sarcastically alludes in the Induction of that
play to ' the politic picklocks of the scene,' who
make it the business * to search out who was
meant by the ginger-bread woman, the hobby-
horse man, and the costard-monger/ he lights up
an excess, but he also does more. He proves the
frequency with which his contemporaries were
wont to look for such topical allusions in the
plays which the age presented to them.

Besides these statements, more or less direct,
of a topical intention, there is also certain evidence
of a more indirect character, pointing however
in the same direction. The titles themselves of
some of the plays point conclusively to a con-
temporary appetite for such fare.

The Famous History of the Life and Death of
Captain 'Thomas Stukely, and the Battle of Alcazar,
would naturally attract those whose memories
went back to the year 1578, or who could

12 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

recollect the stirring events of 1589 and Don
Antonio. The Massacre of Paris would call up
a fateful evening of 1572 ; Bartholomew Fair, that
annual English scene of revelry, credulity, and
vice. Plays like Bussy d'Ambois and the Tragedy
of B iron would remind the English public of
stormy scenes enacted in their own time beyond
the narrow seas : while John van Olden Barnaveldt
was a play whose subject came piping-hot from
the Low Countries.

Sometimes the contemporary item would take
a lowlier tone, as when some of the domestic
tragedies that darken every age, crept on to the
stage. 'The most tragical and lamentable murther
of Master George Saunders of London, merchant,
nigh Shooters Hill: consented unto by his owne
wife, etc., was a typical example of the class.
Episodes such as these would nowadays drift
naturally into newspaper channels ; but then it
was the stage that caught them, and the Yorkshire
Tragedy, Arden of Fever sham, The Woman killed
with Kindness, and the Fair Maid of Bristol (all
turning on crimes of recent date), show with how
keen a relish popular audiences were wont to
witness the most lugubrious crimes of their day,
represented again in their grimy detail.

Then again, the most casual reader of the
dramatists is constantly alighting on words and
phrases which are undoubted reminiscences of

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 13

Elizabethan life, and which stand out clearly in
their context, unmistakable as they are significant.
Brownists and Puritans, the Cotsols and Ber-
moothes, Moorditch with its melancholy, and
St. Paul's with its walks, theatres and actors,
justices and beadles, hobby-horses and loggats,
village-greens and ale-houses, — with each and
every one there lingers, as they lie embalmed in
the pages of the dramatists, something of that
glowing life which they were wont to breathe
when Chelsea was yet a village, and but one
bridge spanned a lovely Thames.

In addition, the great popularity of the Eliza-
bethan plays in their own age, coupled with the
great after-decline in that popularity, also seems
to lend additional evidence as to the existence of
this topical element. If the popularity of Shake-
speare, for instance, in his own day simply rested
upon an adequate appreciation of his poetical
genius, the intellectual fibre of the people must
have declined to an alarming extent in the genera-
tions immediately succeeding. For with his own
age passed, for a time at least, much of his
popularity. Even allowing that the Elizabethan
atmosphere was conducive to poetical apprecia-
tion, the fact of his extraordinary popularity is
not sufficiently accounted for. And unless the
hypothesis of a decline in English intellectual
stamina is accepted, the natural inference seems to

i4 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

be, that to his contemporaries the plays of Shake-
speare presented certain features which chained
their interest, but which in a few decades became
dead matter to the general. And there is nothing
more likely to correspond to an influence of this
description than that of topical matter.

The self-centred character of the age, too, lends
additional probability as to the presence of such
contemporary matter in the drama of the day.
We are all better pleased at seeing our neighbours
derided than at witnessing the comic distresses of
some extraneous personages. Our compassion is
more readily aroused at misfortunes which may
to-morrow befall us, than at all the impossible
woes of all the heroes and heroines since the days
of Agamemnon. We are slow to discard the
age from our thoughts. But a people brimming
over with action and with newly-found life would
still less willingly have left all politics and gossip
outside the doors of the theatre. Such things
were an integral part of life to them, and it
would be difficult to think of a dramatist woo-
ing such a generation for immediate success, by
addressing himself as if to a dispassionate and
disinterested posterity that was Hecuba to him.
Something of that outside world would have to be
conjured up on the stage, and the poet in his
highest flights would have to remember, every
now and then, to touch earth once again. In no

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 15

age probably did dramatic writers have to bow
more scrupulously to contemporary feeling, for
in no age had there existed a nation more wrapt
up in self, more conscious of the pride of race and of
its budding glories. * Alas,' said Carlyle, c Shake-
speare had to write for the Globe play-house : his
great soul had to crush itself as it could into that
and no other mould/ The ' Globe' was England;
the England of his day shaped his thoughts and
chose his topics. No wonder, then, if much that
interested his contemporaries could be read in his
works.

There is yet one more consideration which
points to the probability of the presence of such
allusions in Elizabethan drama.

In the Middle Ages, the moralities which fostered
the English drama ' on scaffolds hye ' had exhibited
the tendency, as it were, in embryo. In the tragic
as in the comic vein, these rough presentations
reflected the life that was led by the people ; for
the audiences that gaped on rude festival plays at
Chester, and Coventry, and elsewhere, soon found
their counterparts on those very stages. Artisan
and cleric crept on to the scaffolding, and mor-
alities became oftentimes accurate, if severe,
portraits of notorious figureheads, such as the
priest, the squire, and the pardoner. So that
even at this early date it seemed that a popular
stage had necessarily to reflect the popular life.

1 6 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

When university scholars tried to revive in
England the classical school of drama, and to bring
the Roman cothurnus on to the English stage,
the sequel only proved the truth of this same
principle. Their close imitation of Seneca caused
their productions to be merely retrospective.
Their plays wanted national interest, and the
stage that chose to neglect the popular life soon
collapsed in its own ruins. Its detachment from
things of the day had completely alienated the
sympathies of the people.

The popular drama, on the other hand, which
had beheld the Senecan type both rise and fall,
instinctively surrendered itself to the popular
tendency. It reflected spontaneously contem-
porary personalities, current opinions, current
events ; and while the wooden puppets of the
scholars were being consigned to an obscurity
not altogether undeserved, the popular kind was
already leaving its grub- stage and opening out
into that golden creation which posterity has
named the Elizabethan drama.

It is difficult to think that the English drama,
arrived at maturity, would scorn those very
principles which had successfully led it from
Chester to the ' Globe,' and had endowed it with
a surpassing truth and virility. Probability, in
fact, points to a directly opposite assumption, and
the intimate contact which the early stage pre-

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 17

served with real life, and which saved it from the
fate of more scholarly and artificial efforts, was
the deciding factor in the growth of the later
drama, and the underlying principle on which the
great creations were subsequently built.

There must have existed, then, a topical element
in the Elizabethan drama. Not only do strong
probabilities point that way, but definite evidence,
external and internal, run in the same direction.
And the existence of these allusions, so far from
being unprecedented, can be regarded merely as the
outcome of national circumstances, which had given
rise to a similar phenomenon on the eastern shores
of the Mediterranean two thousand years before.

But what sometimes makes the modern accept-
ance of the topical tendency difficult, as far as
Elizabethan times are concerned, is the fact that
the tendency is, generally speaking, absent from
the serious stage of to-day. The ' Lyceum ' does
not shadow forth the day's politics of personalities
as the * Globe ' is said to have done, and it is there-
fore somewhat difficult to allow that the alleged
references to local and national events and person-
alities did actually exist in the earlier drama.

The absence of the topical, however, from the
stage of to-day need supply no argument against
its employment on the Elizabethan one. Its
presence in the one case, as well as its absence
from the other, is due to a difference of

B

1 8 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

contemporary conditions, a difference in the idea
of what lies within the dramatic province. And
this is due not to one cause alone.

In the first place, more than one institution has
relieved the stage of what fell to its lot in the
old days ; among such institutions, journalism.
Politics since then have fallen on to the more
perfect platform of the newspaper, and if a con-
venient medium is now sought for the utterance
of ' popular, busy, or seditious matter,' the
journalist supplies the means. So it has come
about that the militant statesman is now no longer
hurried across the stage with hunted look and
matted hair when his policy is not approved, nor
is the man whose voice is raised in the street
made 'a May-game of on the stage. Both are,
instead, guillotined by the newspapers.

Then again, modern Art is taken more gravely
than in the breezy days of Drake and his Devon-
shire sea-dogs. Modern sensations are not
willingly mingled ; and art and polemics were
never good playfellows. Hence the latter-day
divorce between the drama and the topical, be-
tween the artistic and what must be often little
more than jarring and commonplace.

The differing character of the respective audi-
ences, too, goes for something. In Elizabethan
times the topical allusion was a needed stimulant
and attraction; for English art was yet in its

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 19

infancy, and it had to work out its own salvation
cautiously, not forgetting the material tendency
of the age. Art, pure and undefiled, would as
yet have scarcely attracted sufficient patrons, and
it was in response to the requirements of the time
that the dramatic art became modified, by the
injection of some of that very age into its com-
position. With the dawn of a greater sensibility,
the topical stimulant became unnecessary, and the
precept which made Art self-sufficient was born.

To our modern ways of thinking, moreover,
there is something derogatory about the term,—
topical element. A place is denied it in the
Elizabethan drama, on the ground that Shakespeare
and his fellows would not have stooped to employ
such a device for recommending their art, as to
mingle something of the age with it. But genius
has never been wont to avoid the market-place.
The Roman Terence held nothing that was human,
alienate. And to state that Shakespeare for one
readily adapted himself to the fashions of his day,
is neither to indict his genius of being gravelled
for lack of argument, nor to brand him as a
charlatan who adulterated his wares for purposes
of sale. When Tallis and Byrd made ' music
and sweet poetry agree ' in their exquisite chamber
recitals, the dramatists followed suit by arranging
for the marriage of music to words on the stage.
And the vogue thus begun was afterwards respon-

20 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

sible for such things as the Silvia lyric and the
'Tempest's sea-dirge. There is no difficulty in
conceiving the adoption of the one fashion. It
should be no harder to imagine the adoption of
that other, which concerned itself with the topical.
All the more because the business faculties of the
greatest of the dramatists have been placed beyond
doubt. He who could prosecute a man at law for
a trifling amount, even while his soul was groan-
ing with the birth of a * Lear,' was surely not one
to refuse to adopt a contemporary fashion, in itself
not inconsistent with artistic sensibility, and which
seemed to be the one thing to confer upon his
efforts that contemporary success, which, more than
academic glory, was the aim and end of his writing.
To call the topical tendency a fashion of the
age of Elizabeth, as far as the drama is concerned,
is not to overstate the case, or to exaggerate things
as they really were. It is true that what has
hitherto been garnered of a topical nature from that
great dramatic field is but fractional, and to some
minds almost accidental, in the total output of
dramatic matter. And, therefore, at first sight it
seems quite out of proportion with what might
reasonably have been expected from a general
tendency of the time. But harvest results do not
always represent the actual crop. Time with his
sickle has been busy among the Elizabethan plays.
As in other realms of production only the fittest

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 21

have survived, and as they were not always those
plays in which contemporary allusions were most
apparent or plentiful, such survivors are naturally
limited in number. Often indeed, as might be
expected, many purely topical plays lasted not a day
longer than that which beheld them produced, and
they passed away almost simultaneously with the
events which called them into being. This is one
reason why the evidence as to the existence of
the topical tendency is more truncated than would
be expected assuming the tendency to have been
general.

Then, too, such allusions were but coyly put
forth, and so would be often lost. Sometimes
they avoided paper altogether ; were, in fact,
' extemporally staged,' as Cleopatra predicted
would be her fate at the hands of the quick
comedians. At others, they were quite covert in
their nature, like those which Master John
Lyly so cunningly wrapped up in his Endymion
Prologue. The pillory and the cropping of ears
both conduced to this shyness of setting down
plain allusions. But, for whatever reason, this
reluctance did undoubtedly exist, and hosts of
allusions which floated over the Elizabethan stage,
recognised by all spectators, have been lost, either
through want of place in the acting version, or
through the ultra-ingenuity of the witty masters.

In many cases, of course, want of knowledge

22 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

on the part of the modern critic must also curtail
the evidence. The lack of acquaintance with all
the minutix of contemporary history must often
prevent allusions being read, where they undoubt-
edly existed for the rudest and most unlettered
Elizabethan : and until a more complete equation
of history with the drama is obtained, these
allusions will continue to be passed over.

So there is more than one reason why any
collection of such allusions, in the present state
of Elizabethan scholarship, could not assume to
be representative of the actual output. And it
is only reasonable to insist that, in deciding on
the probability or otherwise of a prevalent topical
tendency in the days of Elizabeth, the appraiser
should remember the section which Time has
submerged, and which ignorance passes over.

It has been said that many allusions have been
undoubtedly lost through the lack of modern
acquaintance with the sixteenth and seventeenth
century conditions. But modern ingenuity has,
in some instances, done its best to supply the
deficiency, in a way, however, that can only add to
the confusion. The loosest of bridles has often
been given to Fancy as it galloped through the
Elizabethan drama in search of allusions ; with
the sole result, however, of a ludicrdus spoil, which
the smallest ray of good sense has been able to
dissolve. That amiable critic who read his

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 23

Tennyson at a time of inspiration and saw that
the In Memoriam,with 'its touching lines, evidently
came from the full heart of the widow of a mili-
tary man/ unconsciously illustrated the dangers
of accepting Fancy as a guide in literary, or in-
deed any, tracts. It is easy to transfer personal
fancies and personal wishes into works of a de-
signedly simple character. And this is a caution
which needs to be borne in mind in deciding on
allusions, lest results may be obtained of fabric as
shadowy as ever Cowper saw in his fire at twilight.
The fact is that all possible allusions must be
considered not from a fanciful, a personal, or a
modern standpoint, but only and entirely from
the Elizabethan one. The contemporary audience
must be the touchstone. The stage must ever be
viewed through those quaint horn spectacles which
Elizabethans used, for the Elizabethan mind is
the only key that can surely unlock the details of
that topical feature of the drama which presented
so many attractions to the age. And before this
Elizabethanism can be attained it will be necessary
to drench oneself thoroughly in the hopes, the
aspirations, and temper of the time ; not the
hopes of the Queen and her counsellors alone, but
of the commonalty as well. Local events and
personalities must be known as well as those that
played a national part, and when this historical
desideratum has been obtained, which is certainly

24 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

not yet, then will the investigation of what is
allusive proceed from an absolutely safe basis.

Besides insisting on the necessity for deciding
the genuineness or otherwise of Elizabethan
allusions solely from Elizabethan planes, there
is yet another caveat to be mentioned, and
it is one which one Phil Kynder, as far back
as 1656, thought it wise to emphasise. The
extraordinary must not be held to typify the
ordinary, and the above writer was at pains to
deprecate any future attempt at making ' all
England in ages past a Bartholomew Fair/ or to
draw * the condition of all Elizabethan women out
of Shackespeare's Merry Wifes of Windsor/
Such an attempt will appear to many to stand
self-condemned ; but there must have been some
cause for Kynder 's statement in his own day, and
it is a fault that has not always been avoided since,
though the instances that have occurred were
scarcely such flagrant breaches as he was pleased
to instance.

It might be noticed in addition, however, that
the same writer sees fit to laugh at the idea of re-
creating a past age from that age's literature.
He considers it idle work, ' the moulding up a
piece of antiquity ' ; and thinks it impossible to
extract from the literature of a country * the
general character and customs of that country/
But this is the very question to which the present

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 25

chapter has attempted to give some reply.
Not only do various strong probabilities go to
confute what he says, but (and this seems more
to the point) a goodly array of significant his-
torical facts as well. The available data may be
smaller in quantity than might be expected, but
neither this nor any antecedent improbability as
to the existence of such genuine data can furnish
a negative of any strength. Just as it was pos-
sible to paint the picture of Athens from the
Attic drama (on Plato's own showing), so can
Shakespeare's England be recovered again from
the Elizabethan plays. It only remains to ap-
preciate the colouring and to catch the forms, for
the full life of which these dramas are the silent
witnesses to be restored again. The author of
our most scholarly work on English dramatic
literature held that the Elizabethan age would have
remained isolated from its successors * had not
its dramatic literature, with a vividness beyond the
reach of any other literary form, transmitted its
own picture of itself to posterity.1 And so ade-
quate does this picture appear to be, that one
would fain indulge the fancy that the sun, which
smiled on the city and also into its roofless theatres,
had caught the fashions from the streets, and
thrown them on to the stage, for the amusement
of that age and the enlightenment of posterity.

1 See Dr. Ward's English Dramatic Literature, i. 269.

CHAPTER II

ON PARTICULAR ALLUSIONS OF THE ELIZABETHAN
STAGE

* / am always inclined to believe that Shakespeare has more allusions
to particular facts and persons than his readers commonly suppose! —
DR. JOHNSON.

IN entering upon the task of collecting material
which shall throw light upon the age of Shake-
speare, the first thing that strikes one is the fact
that the material divides itself, roughly speaking,
into two main classes — the one containing allusions
of a particular kind, which connect themselves
with definite events, personalities, and opinions ;
the other comprising more general allusions, which
relate to no particular figures or events, but
represent rather broad types and general charac-
teristics.

The first section, the ' particular,' appear to be
intentionally made. Their insertion seems to be
nothing less than the dramatist's response to the
age's craving for a topical stimulant. Those of a
< general ' kind, on the other hand, seem to be more
casually inserted. Often, indeed, their presence

2G

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 27

seems merely due to an unconscious effort on
the part of the dramatist. But they are, despite
their seemingly casual insertion, inevitable in their
appearance. They are, in reality, as necessary to
the verisimilitude of the drama as shadow to sun-
light, and are equally indispensable in filling up the
age's picture.

The c particular' allusions, as contrasted with
the c general,' appear at first sight to be the more
important as a class, just as the deciphering of a
hidden personality seems of more weight than the
notice of a custom. The former, too, is the class
over which labour and ingenuity have been the
more abundantly spent, oftentimes to the almost
entire neglect of the c general ' kind. Yet the latter
is the class, which contains the essentials of the age.
c Particular ' allusions often do little more than
glance at the age, and present its accidents and
idle excrescences. Both, however, are necessary.
A particular incident may point to a widely spread
custom. A general custom may light up an
individual. So that if the picture of the age is to
be adequate and complete, as far as the present-
day scholarship permit, not only are the curious
and occasional detail to be filled in, but the
permanent background as well.

The intention of the present chapter concerns
itself solely with direct references to personalities
and events contained in the Elizabethan drama.

28 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

Such references will be seen to cover a large field,
for there seems scarcely any department of Eliza-
bethan life which is not represented.

It has been already seen that matters of high
import were often dragged on to the English stage,
in spite of Royal prohibitions. Elizabeth and her
successor were often alluded to, sometimes from a
desire to panegyrise, at other times in a spirit of
hostile criticism. The poets and wits also came
in for their share of notice, and just as in the case
of the sovereigns, these notices are valuable inas-
much as they illustrate the temper of the age and
the sentiments of the individual. Curious political
shreds, too, were often appearing before the foot-
lights, and these, pieced together, will give some
notion of current opinion. Passing events in their
flight would sometimes cast shadows upon the stage,
and these have the virtue of occasionally corro-
borating, in the freshest of ways, historical records,
when, indeed, they do not supplement them.
Even news from beyond the seas found at times
a publicity on this same English stage, and such
narratives are scarcely ever without some signifi-
cance as to the national attitude towards neigh-
bouring peoples, or as to the success of national
enterprise abroad.

The contemporary drama will, in this way,
supply the key to much that was contemporary,
and peculiar to the age. To bring out these

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 29

peculiarities is the utility from the modern stand-
point of the c particular ' allusion.

In an age like the one under present discussion,
when euphuistic flowers were strewed about in
rich profusion, it would not unnaturally be ex-
pected that the same luxury of language would
distinguish courtly allusions made in the drama.
Dedications were invariably couched in honeyed
superlatives, and a neat tongue at court availed
more than a quick sword. But this notwith-
standing, a splendid moderation characterises
nearly every compliment paid on the stage to
the reigning sovereign, and this is not unworthy
of notice. It could not have been an obtuseness,
a tardiness in nature, that led to this moderation
on the part of the dramatists, for they were,
when they willed, creators of kings who trod the
boards with regal dignity. Nor could it have been
an unwillingness to bend the pregnant hinges of
the dramatic knees. Possibly it was because they
were merely reproducing the tempered courtesy
of the people towards the Crown, undazzled as
they were by the glare of the Court. From
whatever cause, however, sprang their moderation
in tributes addressed to the throne, their allusions
were marked in consequence by a saneness that
makes them the more valuable as evidence.

The most familiar allusion to the Virgin Queen
will occur to all. The famous allegory known as

30 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

Oberon's Vision in the Midsummer Night's Dream
undoubtedly refers to the splendid revels of the
Court held at Kenilworth early in the Queen's
reign. There Leicester made a last desperate
attempt to win the hand of his queenly votaress,
wrapped in ' maiden meditation, fancy free.' l
How the proud Earl, as c Cupid all armed/
fluttered undecidedly between his love for the
Queen (c the cold moon/ c that fair vestal throned
in the west ') and the Countess of Sheffield (' the
Earth '), and how Cupid's bolt fell at last upon
the Countess of Essex (that ' little western
flower, Before milk-white, now purple with
love's wound ') — all this is a tale which Scott
has told in part, and is Shakespeare's most direct
allusion to the Court life of the haughty Queen.
It is a particular reference to a well-known
incident, and it enshrines not only her love for
Royal progresses, but also for the complimentary
Masque.

The Merry Wives of Windsor contains another
direct allusion, where Mrs. Anne Page invokes a
blessing upon Windsor Castle.2 But in generosity,
this passage lags far behind the one in Henry VIII.
where it is foretold that

4 She shall be loved and feared : her own shall bless her.
Her foes shall shake like a field of beaten corn,

1 See Midsummer Night's Dream, n. ii. 98 ff.

2 Merry Wives of Windsor ; v. v. 60 ff.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 31

And hang their heads with sorrow :

Many days shall see her,
And yet no day without a deed to crown it.' 1

In addition to these, in Locrine she is compli-
mented on having reigned for eight-and-thirty
years ; in Bussy d'Ambois, Guise says of the
English Court, that they make

' of their old Queen
An ever-young and most immortal goddess' ;2

and Greene, in more conventional strain, had
already issued another prophecy. ' Diana's rose '
should receive the homage of ' Apollo's heliotrope,
and Venus* hyacinth, of Juno's gilliflowers, and
Pallas' bay, and Ceres' carnation.' 3 Antiquity's
best and brightest were to pale before England's
future Queen.

Towards the end of her reign, however, tongues
were beginning to wag on what was called the
Queen's decline in might and majesty. Then
Jonson gallantly stood by her, and in his Cynthia s
Revels he makes her proudly say, ' We are no less
Cynthia than we were,'4 and therein claims for
her, her ancient greatness and power undiminished.
The sympathies of the people for the Virgin
Queen, even when death had claimed her, were
certainly not buried with her. After her day

1 Henry VIII., v. iv. 30 ff. 3 friar Bacon, ad fin.

2 Chapman, Bussy D'Ambois, act I. 4 Cynthia s Revels, v. iii.

32 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

her early difficulties are related again in Hey-
wood's Troubles of Queen Elizabeth.1 The thorny
path that had led her to the throne, is called to
mind, and the triumphs of the dead Queen seemed
only the greater for that happy perspective, in
which the lapse of a few years had placed them.

Other allusions to the same exalted personage
have from time to time been suggested by modern
readers of Elizabethan drama. It has been
thought that in Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare in-
tended the theatre-going audiences of James' reign
to behold their former Queen lightly shadowed.
This involves the supposition of a prevalent senti-
ment, contrary to that inferred from Heywood's
play. But it is not impossible that the two
sentiments may have been held by different
sections of the community, and at all events, there
is something to be said for this last suggestion.
In Lady Macbeth's treatment of the kinsman who
was both sovereign and guest, the dramatist
designedly drew, to all appearance, a parallel to
Elizabeth's behaviour towards the Scottish Mary.
The parallelism is continued in the fact that the
sovereignty in each instance passed to the son of
the murdered monarch, and though this may seem
nothing more than an unavoidable coincidence,
the frequent additions made to the Chronicle
account in building up the play, seem to point to

1 Otherwise called If you kntnv not me.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 33

some such purpose in the play. The points of like-
ness may seem obscure at this point of time, but the
probability is that they were more than sufficient
to awaken the imagination of the audience at a
time when the gossips had not yet left off talking
about the release of Southampton, that ardent
friend of Mary's. And if the popular imagination
was capable of any response, it would probably
soon arrive at Shakespeare's intentions, whether
they connected themselves with Queen Elizabeth,
or merely with the recital of a weird piece of
northern history. Elsewhere, others have seen in
Portia's review of her suitors 1 an allusive com-
pliment to the much-wooed Queen. Others
have held that it was the beautiful auburn hair
of the Queen (usually displayed in an open
Italian caul) that was praised when chestnut
was declared to be ' ever the only colour.' 2
If these allusions seem far-fetched, they must
yet not be lightly dismissed. What may have
been to a contemporary a palpable hit may
seem to-day wide of the mark, and it is in such
cases as these that the Elizabethan equation is
most necessary.

Besides these passing allusions to the Maiden
Queen, her personality broods over plays where

1 Merchant of Venice, i. ii.

2 As You Like It, in. iv. 125 cf. also Two Gentlemen of Verona,
iv. iv. 191.

C

34 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

her footsteps are not seen. Her reign, its polity
and temper, to some extent permeate the Shake-
spearean histories, and allusions arise from the text
like misty forms, somewhat vague but none the
less coherent. The histories are, in fact, a mirror
of the time. They reflect contemporary under-
currents, and in them the dramatist sings a chorus
to his age.

There were numerous reasons why, in the days
of Elizabeth, occasional sullen murmurs of dis-
content should have existed among the people :
and it is some of these murmurs which rise at
intervals from the Shakespearean history. The
Queen never ran directly counter to what she
knew to be the strongest wishes of her people.
But points of difference were bound to arise from
such causes as her fondness for favourites, or her
approval of Burleigh's subterfuges for oppressing
the country by unjust taxation. Her policy of
expediency was heartless. It made her last word
unstable, and as Camden said, * it often caused her
to knowingly abandon innocent persons under
accusation.' She was her father's child, and there
was not a little personal tyranny and jealousy in
her dealings with the Queen of Scots, with Essex
and Southampton. So that it must needs have
been that the realm contained, among those who
thought, some who complained, and it is some-
thing of this popular disquietude which is re-

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 35

vealed with fitting dignity in the allusive tone of
these histories.

While the power of Leicester yet lived in the
memory, and while 'grievous exactions' were
being ' generally imposed upon the people,' * then
does the dramatist throw off his studies of polity
in Henry VI. and Richard //., whereby he illus-
trated how weak sovereigns could be led to ruin
by evil advisers and indulgence in unjust taxation.
When the country suffered impatiently under the
subterfuges of Burleigh, then comes the play of
Richard III., in which the scheming tyrant, furthered
by corrupt nobles, is overthrown by righteous re-
bellion. When plots and machinations threatened
to revive the days of Throgmorton and Babington ;
when the Papists held out their hands across
the water to Philip of Spain and the Duke of
Mayenne, then does the dramatist in King John
and Henry VI. expose the miseries of foreign
intervention even when supported by the justest
of revolts. The play of Henry V. is partly a
political placard for Essex and his friends, whose
success Shakespeare would have viewed with such
enthusiasm, but it also demonstrates how righteous
and great achievement would overwhelm in the
Elizabethan mind all outlying questions relating
to succession. And in Henry VIII.y when his
hopes for Essex were dashed, he draws a sombre

1 Verstegan (1592).

36 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

picture of Royalty leaning on the support of
extortionate lawyers and unscrupulous clerics.1

But besides thus echoing definite contemporary
complaints, these plays also sound notes of pride
and patriotism, which in their intensity are almost
peculiar to Elizabeth's reign. In King John the
Protestant self-reliance is powerfully exhibited ; in
Henry V. and Richard II. Elizabethan patriotism
is taken to divine heights. The majesty and
dignity of old Gaunt's tribute to ' the precious
stone set in the silver sea,' 2 the haughty defiance
of Faulconbridge on behalf of the England that

* Never did, nor never shall
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror ' : 3

these things represent only that fire which Elizabeth,
with all her faults, had infused into the nation.

Incidentally, too, Henry V. enunciates a definite
political plea which could not have been at that
time confined to the dramatist's brain. It was a
plea for unity : unity among the four English-
speaking nationalities, and unity among the
English themselves. The play has representatives
of the four countries fighting side by side under
one flag, and for the same end. The question of
consolidation was in the air when the play was
being written. Ireland, so it was thought, was

1 Cf. R. Simpson, * Politics of Shakespeare's Historical Plays'
(Shak. Soc. Trans., 1874).

2 Richard II., n. i. 46. 3 King John, v. vii. 112.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 37

being pacified by Essex. Wales was already
united, and the probability of union with Scotland
had already become apparent from the considera-
tion of James's claims to the English crown.

The need for national unity, on the other hand,
had been obvious from the earlier years of Eliza-
beth's reign. But this need was a doctrine which
required constant formulating on account of the
many difficulties that presented themselves. The
faith of some Englishmen seemed to beckon
them to Spain, and a choice seemed to be offered
between creed and country. Elizabeth must have
often said, at least in effect, to her people : < Be
friends, you English fools, be friends : we have
French quarrels enow, if you could tell how to
reckon/ l And to the general acceptance of this
counsel must be referred that unanimous closing
up of English ranks for the great effort of '88.
But such advice from the stage was not given only
by Shakespeare. The writer of Gorboduc, too, had
made his protest against discord. He had advised
his hearers to choose the one for sovereign ' upon
whose name the people rest,' whether it was c by
means of native line ' or c by the virtue of some
former law/

' Such one prefer and in no wise admit
The heavy yoke of foreign governaunce.' 2

All this had a tremendous meaning before

1 Henry P., iv. i. 221. 2 Gorboduc, v. 2,

3 8 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

Shakespeare was born. The Queen, then, was
scarcely settled on her throne before foreign
princes were suing for her hand, and nothing but
national unity seemed to be able to save the
country from confusion. Well might the modern
critics say that Gorboduc had political intentions.
And this, if true, would lend probability to similar
readings in what Shakespeare wrote.

There will be noticed in these historical plays
a frequent rearrangement of fact and alteration of
motive in the history dealt with. And this lends
undoubted colour to the supposition that Shake-
speare had in some slight measure adapted them
to his age, that he had rounded off the past to
resemble his present.

In Henry VI. Suffolk is certainly made to
approach Leicester in character to a degree not
warranted by historical records. For Suffolk's
enclosure of the common at Milford and his
treatment of the petitioners1 are events that cannot
be otherwise than identified with Leicester's tak-
ing of ' whole forests, woods, and pastures ' to
himself, and then having the discontented claimants
hung.2 * Enclosures . . . make fat Beasts and
leane poore people,7 wrote a contemporary, and
this forms a comment on this very incident.8

In King John the historical quarrel against John

1 Cf. 2 Henry A7., i. iii. 2 Leicester's Commoirwealthy pp. 61-72.
3 Cf. R. Simpson, * Politics of Shakespeare's Historical Plays'
(Shak. Soc. Trans., 1874).

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 39

as a tyrant is changed into one against him as
a usurper, doubtless to make the position coincide
with that of Elizabeth ; for, as is well known,
interested foreign opinion, and to some extent
native opinion, held her title to be defective.

John's wars are also abridged so as to typify
Elizabeth's troubles. The first was represented
as on behalf of his title ; the second as against
the Pope and his agents. It may have been
dramatically advisable to abridge the wars, but it
cannot be said that it was absolutely necessary so to
abridge them as to make them fall exactly into line
with the two main struggles of Elizabeth's reign.1

Similarly, in the manipulation of the history
connected with Henry IV. , three risings are
reduced to two, and apparently for reasons similar
to those already mentioned. The first war is
again ascribed to secular motives ; in the second,
ecclesiastical influences are at work.2

So that, in this uniform treatment of historical
fact, in these rearrangements of the past by
Shakespeare, there were intended to be read, in
all probability, portrayals of his present, definite
pronouncements of his own, or at all events of the
people, on current events and politics. Thus was
the shadow of Elizabeth and her reign over the
dramatist as he wrote.

To the great Queen's successor many allusions

1 Cf. R. Simpson, 'Politics of Shakespeare's Historical Plays'
(Shak. Soc. Trans.~T.%74). 2 Ibid.

40 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

were also made, from which something of his
personality and policy can easily be gleaned.

The happy and fortunate union of the crowns
of Scotland, England, and Ireland under James is
hinted at, when the horrified Macbeth, in that
witch-haunted cavern, beholds the slow procession
of the line of kings, and among the descendants
of c blood-bolter'd Banquo ' some ' that twofold
balls and treble sceptres carry/ l This same union
is also touched upon in King Lear, where the word
English is supplanted by that of * British ' in the
wording of the ' Childe Rolande ' ballad.2

There can also be no doubt that the 'most
miraculous work ' of good King Edward the Con-
fessor, as described in Macbeth^ his curing of
' strangely-visited people, all swoln and ulcerous/ 3
was meant as a tribute to the prince who boasted
that the touching for the king's evil was the
' healing benediction ' bequeathed to him by pre-
ceding royalty. Perhaps the King's ungracious
behaviour towards the crowd which received him
on his state entry into England is respectfully
explained and touched with dignity, when in
Measure for Measure the Duke professes to dis-
like staging himself before the people he loves.
He did not relish 'their loud applause and Aves
vehement,' 4 and to him ' the obsequious fondness '

1 Macbeth, iv. i. 121. 2 King Lear, in. iv. 185.

3 Macbeth, iv. iii. 150. 4 Measure for Measure^ I. i. 70.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 41

of £ untaught love ' l did appear offence. It has
been suggested that the prototype of Prospero is
to be found in this same King, imbued as he was
with sorcerer's love. But this seems far-fetched ;
for between the puffy monarch who wrote a book
on Demonology and the lonely wizard of that
Mediterranean isle there lies a great way.

Like Elizabeth, however, James was glorified
by prophecy after the event in Henry VIII. When
Heaven had called England's Queen 'from this
cloud of darkness/ then was to reign one who,
' like a mountain cedar,' should ' reach his
branches to all the plains about him.'

' Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,
His honour and the greatness of his name
Shall be, and make new nations.'2

One of the first acts of James's reign had been
the taking of the Lord Chamberlain's players
into his own service as the King's players, so that
somewhat happy relations probably existed be-
tween throne and stage. It must be confessed,
however, that the picture above is overdrawn,
unless indeed colonial enterprise is hinted at ; but
even then it flatters.

The stage, however, could also criticise the
royal conduct,3 and in a play called The Faithful

** Measure for Measure, n. iv. 29.

2' Henry HIL, v. iv. 52.

3 See Beaumont and Fletcher, Faithful Friends, i. i.

42 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

Friends, the royal weakness for favourites is
thrown on the screen. * Alexander the Great/
says the dramatist, ' had his Hephaestion, Philip
of Spain his Lerma,' and then adds cautiously
but significantly :

' not to offend,

I could produce from Courts that I have seen
More royal precedents.' (i. i.)

James's lavish distribution of knightly honours
in 1604 also comes in for frequent criticism, and,
it may be added, ridicule. This throwing about
of titles must have caused no little annoyance to
those who laid store by such things ; envy, too, to
those who could not own to having been per-
sonally concerned. So that, allusions to this one
among the kingly foibles were none the less
powerful for being backed by general opinion.

c These knights will hack ' 1 (i.e. become hack-
neyed), said Mrs. Ford, with no little confidence, in
the Merry Wives ; and she advises in consequence
her good friend Mrs. Page not to alter her title
of mere gentility.

In Eastward Hoe James's ' thirty pound knights '
are more than once ridiculed in the character of
Sir Petronel, ' knight adventurer ' ; and this is the
play that contains the sneer which stung Sir
James Murray so badly and caused the imprison-
ment of the dramatists concerned.2

1 Merry Wives, n. i. 51. 2 Drummond's Conversations, pp. 20 ff.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 43

The invasion of northerners, Which James
tended to encourage, was a standing grievance
with the English people, both high and low ; and
when Seagull in this play describes the Scots as
great friends to England ' when they are out on 't,'
he is no doubt echoing a general sentiment, and
one is irresistibly reminded of the pungent satire
for which England's great Doctor was afterwards
responsible.

But if the King's domestic conduct was not
exempt from dramatic comment, neither was his
foreign polity. In Middleton's Game of Chess, c a
very scandalous comedy/ as one courtly writer l
deemed it, will be found a more exact reflec-
tion of contemporary English diplomacy and the
nation's comment on the same than will be found
elsewhere in the whole range of the native drama.

This comedy, ' in which the person of his
Majesty had been represented in a rude and dis-
honourable fashion,' according to the courtly one
already mentioned — this comedy has been well
described as approaching most nearly to the
Aristophanic conception of the topical uses of
comedy.2 Although the veil of allegory was
thrown over his sentiments by the playwright,
the actors' forms are none the less visible under-
neath, and the allegorical device, like fine drapery,

1 Secretary Conway in a letter to the Privy Council, 1624.

2 Cf. Dr. Ward, English Dramatic Literature, ii. 536.

44 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

only accentuated and vivified the forms which lay
below.

The comedy took the stage just after war had
been declared against Spain, that is in 1624. It
owed its being to the fact that the Spanish
marriage — that scheme which James had nursed
so zealously — had fallen through. Young Charles
and Buckingham had visited Madrid to no pur-
pose, greatly to the joy of the English people ;
and when Middleton openly rejoiced that the
proposed alliance had fallen through, he knew that
he voiced the nation.

In the Game of Chess James is the White King,
and he is portrayed as completely under the influ-
ence of Count Gondomar, the Spanish emissary.
Plain colours were everywhere in the play used
by the dramatist. The White Knight is Prince
Charles, the White Duke, Buckingham, the White
King's Pawn, probably Sir Toby Matthew, who in
1623 had gone to Madrid as the Prince's adviser.

The invective, however, was mainly reserved
for the black party, that of Spain, and above all
for the minister Gondomar. The Fat Bishop
was meant to hit off Antonio di Dominis, a
notorious convert from Rome to Protestantism,
who was after his conversion made Dean of
Windsor by James. He is ridiculed as * a greasy
turncoat gormandising prelate/ From the picture
of Gondomar no single effort was withheld. The

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 45

malady with which he was afflicted is mentioned.
The very litter which his malady made necessary,
too, is represented. He is made to allude to the
English -Algerian expedition of 1620, which he
had so cunningly brought about :

* from the White Kingdom, to secure our coasts
Against the infidel pirate, under pretext
Of more necessitous expedition.' l

He is also represented as glorying over the part
he had played in inducing James to release the
imprisoned Catholics of 1622, when he

' made the jails fly open without miracle,
And let the locusts out, those dangerous flies,
Whose property is to burn corn without touching.'

With such faithfulness of detail were the figures
drawn. The royal polity, moreover, was laid
bare in so merciless a fashion, that were there
no other available material for constructing the
history of this epoch, it could easily be drawn in
part from this single play of Middleton's.2

Except with reference to the sovereigns, Court-
allusions are not common in the Elizabethan drama.
Though many men of title were of material
assistance at different times to the actor and his
craft, the homage in return for such help was paid
elsewhere and by other means than in the drama.

The personality of Essex was the one which

1 Cf. Game of Chess ; in. i.

2 Cf. Dr. Ward, English Dramatic Literature, ii. 524 ff.

46 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

attracted, on the whole, the greatest number of
allusive notices. In the first place there is the
somewhat affectionate allusion in Shakespeare's
Henry V. to ' the general of our gracious Empress/
who might in good time be ' from Ireland coming,
bringing rebellion broached on his sword/ * This
was at the period when Essex stood in the sun.
Later, when the shadows fell upon him, allusions
to him became correspondingly sad and gloomy.
He is called Actason in Cynthia s Revels? and the
presumption which marked his dealings with the
Queen, together with its doleful end, is pointed to.
In Macbeth the behaviour of the Thane of
Cawdor corresponds in almost every circumstance
with that of Essex, and it is not impossible that
behind the dramatic personality the historical one
is lightly shadowed. ' Treasons capital, confessed
and proved/ 3 overthrew Cawdor. The repentance
of Essex, his confession and petition for forgive-
ness, form a parallel. Nothing in Cawdor's life
' became him like the leaving of it.' The end of
Essex was one of noble dignity. Perhaps, too,
it is Essex who is hinted at when Hero speaks
to Margaret in Much Ado About Nothing, of

* favourites,

Made proud by princes, that advance their pride
Against that power that bred it.' 4

1 Henry V., v. Chorus, 30. 2 Cf. Cynthia s Revels, v. 3.

3 Macbeth, i. iii. 115. 4 Much Ado About Nothing, in. i. 9.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 47

Perhaps, too, it is Elizabeth's ring to Essex on
his departure for Cadiz which is alluded to in
All's Well. Such an idea may well have crossed
the minds of the audience who knew of the gift.
On the other hand, the scorn poured on Puri-
tanism in the play seems a little inconsistent with
that assumption.1

It would, however, almost seem as if the mind of
Shakespeare found some strange attraction in the
deeds and fate of the impetuous and unfortunate
Earl. As far back as 1589, when Essex had been
sent to France with 4000 English volunteers, the
incident seemed to have given direction to the
dramatist's workings ; for soon afterwards he
develops an interest in French politics, and writes
his Loves Labour 's Lost. In the outline sketch of
that humane idealist Brutus, as we see him in Julius
C<esar, there also seems some added memories of
Essex. Proud Essex had boasted of keeping his
heart from baseness. He had questioned in a
letter to Egerton whether ' an earthly power
or authority ' could be infinite : like Brutus, he
knew c no personal cause to spurn at the exacting
and autocratic sovereign but for the general. ' 2
Strangely akin was this Elizabethan in his single-
ness of mind and purity of motive to the lofty
Stoic, who, like him, violated intimate ties of affec-

1 See Fleay's Life of Shakespeare, p. 218.

2 Julius Ctesar, 11. i. 12.

48 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

tion for the public well-being. It seems hard to
say that Shakespeare's Roman derived no single
touch in his making from that Earl who was
the cynosure of all English eyes at the time.1

To that other noble figure which towered
above its peers in the realms of Elizabeth, namely
Leicester, the allusions are fewer, but scarcely less
significant. The part he played at Kenilworth in
bidding for the royal hand has already been
touched upon. But Lyly had previously sketched a
chapter out of Leicester's romance in his Endymion,
a play which is really a glorified version of that
Earl's restoration to royal favour, after his secret
marriage with Lettice, Countess of Essex, and
after his confinement in Greenwich Castle in
consequence. Endymion (who of course is
Leicester), after slumbering away forty years, is
awakened by Cynthia's kiss (Cynthia being the
Queen). He forthwith proceeds to relate his
experiences ; and after the recital, his marriage
is condoned, and reconciliation with the Queen
and goddess follows. This happy result had
been brought about partly by the good offices
of one Eumenides ; and this latter personage
has been identified with Sussex on no less an
authority than that of Camden, ' lantern unto

1 See also R. Simpson's paper, * The Political use of the stage in
Shakespeare's time,1 for the political bearing of Thomas Heywood's
Royal King and Loyal Subject, etc.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 49

late succeeding age.' Leicester is also hinted at
in unmistakable terms in the Yorkshire Tragedy,
where it states that

' The surest way to charm a woman's tongue
Is — break her neck : a politician did it.' (Sc. v.)

This is undoubtedly an allusion to the fateful
story of Amy Robsart, Leicester's first wife, at
Cumnor Hall.

With somewhat less certainty has the figure of
Burleigh been suggested as the original of the
Polonius portrait. The ' wretched rash intruding
fool/ with his trite maxims and pompous ex-
pressions, is indeed a comic and overcharged
study. But there seems just a probability, not-
withstanding, that he is a study of that antiquated
politician whom the Lord High Admiral styled
' an old greybeard with a white head.' Burleigh's
perpetual interference and euphuistic pomp of
speech, which find a parallel in the Polonius
portrait, were far from popular features in a
minister ; while the advice of the aged Dane
to his son in the play — advice founded on the
most utilitarian precepts — as well as his effete
maxims, would have come with equal verisimilitude
from the English statesman, for the fluctuating
policy and economical tricks of the latter were
prompted by similar motives. Even Burleigh's
hostility to the stage and the stage's consequent
hostility to him are hinted at, when Hamlet

50 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

recommends Polonius cto see the players well
bestowed/ and * to let them be well used/ for
fear of ill report during his life.1

With regard to Southampton, whose figure
looms large in that age of patronage, a possible
reference seems to occur in Shakespeare's dedica-
tory notices to his two great narrative poems.
In these dedications a note of honest affection can
be heard sounding above all the ornate language
with which the poet decorated his notice like so
much fanciful arabesque. This liberal patron of
arts and letters had shown the young playwright
'honourable disposition/ but it is doubtful whether
he is to be considered as being the beautiful youth
who lurks in the background of so many of the
Sonnets. Indeed, it is doubtful whether any
tribute to his patron ever left the poet's pen as
it told of men and matters, though it has been
suggested that a faint compliment to Southampton
is intended, where the garrulous old nurse in
Romeo and Juliet will not allow that Romeo's
name begins with R. That letter she describes
as the dog's name 'which burreth in the sound.'2
It would be remembered that Southampton's
family name was Wriothesley ; so the nurse's
certainty as to the initial letter being the more
auspicious one may possibly have called up the

1 Hamlet, n. ii. 528.

2 Romeo and Juliet, n. iv. 212. Cf. Johnson's Grammar.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 51

Wriothesley, who was certainly at that time the
poet's patron. The suggestion, perhaps, derives
some faint increase of probability from the fact
that to other critics the whole play seems to
allude to the delays that hindered Elizabeth
Vernon's marriage with this very Wriothesley.

What is perhaps the noblest figure of them all
has yet to be noticed. It would be pleasant to
think that Sidney, the courtier, the soldier, and
the scholar, that purest of Elizabethan souls, who
could dream Arcadias and adorn Death itself, was
successful in finding an epitaph in the lines of the
great bard. But here again the point is not
certain. Though Ophelia's description of Hamlet
as

4 The expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion and the mould of form ;

The observed of all observers/ l

would be singularly applicable to this many-sided
and cultured Sidney, no definite assertion can be
made, though possibly that notable form was float-
ing in the dramatist's mind as he wrote.

The prototype for another creation of Shake-
speare's, however — that of Benedick — has been
suggested in the person of Pembroke, another
brilliant patron of letters. The witty fastidious-
ness and the rooted objection to marriage of the
Elizabethan courtier find a true counterpart in

1 Hamlet , in. i. 159.

52 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

the caustic wit and strange indifference of the
young Paduan ; and it is more than possible that
the dramatist was sketching from life when he
added this portrait to his gallery. The sugges-
tion which has been made, that Sir Nicholas Bacon
is represented in the immortal figure of Falstaff —
because both were fat — can hardly be taken seri-
ously.1 It was Mr. Swinburne who satirically
made out a case for seeing the hoary Burleigh
under the disguise of Romeo !

Of more or less definite allusions to persons of
rank, there remains yet one to be noticed, and
that has reference to Arabella Stuart. This lady,
descended from Margaret Tudor, and niece of
Lord Darnley, towards the end of Elizabeth's
reign was induced to allow her claims to the
English crown to be asserted. Accordingly
Jonson in his Cynthia s Revels 2 impeaches her as
a ' swoln Niobe,' for presuming farther than did
even Actaeon (Essex). With this slight reference
the allusions to Elizabethan dignitaries seem con-
cluded. Flying references occur here and there,
but they come ' scant of breath ' and scarcely bear
enumerating. Those which have been given are
perhaps not always too clear in outline. But this
one point cannot be doubted : that, underlying

1 See Notes and Queries, jrd Series, HI. 83, 105 ; quoted by
Mr. S. Lee.

2 See Cynthia's Revels, v. 3.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 53

the dramatic treatment of Shakespeare, of Lyly,
and Jonson, to mention no others, there lies a
tendency to reflect particulars of the age, parti-
culars relating to court intrigues, and probably
the characteristics of some of England's most
favoured sons.

Allusions made by the dramatists to their own
brother wits are not without significance as to the
relations of the individuals of the literary tribe,
one to another. Some of them are critical notices,
some satirical and even abusive. Others spring
from literary courtesy, and from that genuine
admiration not always found among artists.

Shadowing the whole intercourse of the drama-
tists was a thinly disguised controversy which ran
through a series of plays, chiefly through those of
Jonson, Marston, and Dekker, but which, accord-
ing to some, invaded the Shakespearean works
as well. This controversy, like that which had
affected religious parties a decade or so earlier
(that of Marprelate), and like that earlier contro-
versy between dramatists supposed to be hidden
in the early English comedy, Damon and Pithias,
advanced the cause of neither party of disputants,
and otherwise resembled the earlier controversies
in its extreme vigour and abandon.

The immediate cause of its outbreak may have
been, perhaps, the absurd tragedy of Marston's
called Antonio and Mellida, a thing of bombast and

54 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

vapourings. It may possibly have been, as others
maintain, the much-vexed question of children-
actors. But what is most probable is that it was
the jeering character of Crysoganus in Marston's
Histriomastix, which was obviously an attack on
Jonson. And Jonson, moreover, is known to
have written to Drummond to the effect that his
quarrels with Mars ton arose from the latter' s
representation of him on the stage. But which-
ever may have been the real cause, the man who
could handle Nature, even in her wintriest moods,
so clumsily as to say, as Marston did, that

* The rawish dank of clumsy winter ramps
The fluent summer's vein : and drizling sleet
Chilleth the wan bleak cheek of the numb'd earth ;
Whilst snarling gusts nibble the juiceless leaves
From the nak'd shudd'ring branch : 1

such a man was in need of some intellectual atten-
tion. And this Ben Jonson took upon himself to
give, executing private revenge in what appeared to
be a public correction. His touch, however, was
none of the lightest, nor was he one of the most
tactful of men. * He was a great lover and
praiser of himself/ wrote a contemporary,2 * a
contemner and scorner of others ; given rather
to losse a friend than a jest, and thought nothing
well but what either he himself or some of his

1 Marston's Antonio and Mellida, opening lines.

2 See Drummond's Conversations.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 55

friends . . . had said or done.' In his Every
Man out of His Humour he had already embodied
in Clove's fustian much of Marston's turgid
vocabulary of Histriomastix, and so blow had been
given for blow. But in his next play, Cynthia s
Revels, though he is general in his satire, lashing
as he did the general undercurrent of bad
literary taste, he succeeded in obtaining both
Marston's and Dekker's warmest reprehension.
Marston must have felt conscious of the personal
application of Jonson's indictment of having
' penuriously gleaned wit from laundress and
hackneyman ' and of having derived some of his
graces ' with servile imitation from common
stages, ... as if his invention had lived wholly
upon another man's trencher ' : for Marston was
a plagiarist. The proper sweetness of the Muse,
Jonson had significantly added, was in shunning
cthe print of any beaten path' and in proving
4 new ways to come to learned ears ' — which had
not been Marston's method.1

This, then, was the first episode in this battle of
the stage : Marston's Histriomastix or Antonio and
Mellida, the casus belli, Jonson's Every Man out
of His Humour and his Cynthia's Revels, two sturdy
rejoinders.

The next was of Jonson's initiative. He
apparently wished to so thoroughly trounce the

1 See Cynthia s Revels, Induct.

56 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

tripping Marston that reply would be out of the
question, and so his Poetaster was hastily put
together in order to anticipate any response from
him who had been medicined. It is possible that
in the meantime Marston got in a faint counter-
blow. That slight thing called Jack Drum's
Entertainment, said to contain a satirical portrait
of Jonson, was possibly of Marston's making.
It seems to have been regarded by Jonson as a
retort, for he evidently saw in it the red rag
which prompted his next assault ; and in the
Poetaster the vocabulary of Crispinus resembles
and satirises the vocabulary of this play in a
marked degree.

In the Poetaster1 Jonson modestly poses as
Horace and installs Dekker, who by this time was
Marston's champion, in the character of Demet-
rius, one ' hired to abuse/ while Marston is
Crispinus the defaulting poet. Horace ' stands
taxed of impudence, self-love, and arrogance by
those who share no merit in themselves/ Demet-
rius is made to acknowledge that he had maligned
Horace for no other reason than because * Horace's
writings had thrived better than his own, were
better liked and graced.' The poetaster himself
(Crispinus) is then purged, by Horace's pills, of
his ventosity, is advised to shun some of the
ancients but to read the best of them, not c to hunt

1 See v. i.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 57

for wild outlandish terms/ not to entertain chance
foreign phrases which neither his understanding
nor his poor tortured verse could receive. With
these and other admonitions the two ' flat grovel-
ing souls ' (of Marston and Dekker) are bound
over to keep the peace, and are dismissed from
Virgil's court.

In reply to this heavy piece of slashing by
Jonson, Dekker undertook to c untruss ' the
c humorous poet/ and the untrussing took place
in his Satiromastix.1

Jonson's painful method of composition is
first cleverly satirised. He is shown in his study,
surrounded by books and engaged in work that
smells of the lamp. He is credited with a plenti-
ful lack of real inspiration, and beats his music out
finally with the halting subterfuges of a quack.

' O me thy Priest inspire !
For I to thee and thine immortal name,'

he writes, and then gets into difficulties :

' In — in — in golden tunes
For I to thee and thine immortal name
In — sacred raptures flowing flowing,

[swimming swimming,
In sacred raptures swimming,
Immortal name, game, dame, tame, lame,

[lame lame.
hath shame, proclaim, oh

1 See in. i.

58 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

In sacred raptures flowing, will proclaim, not

O me thy Priest inspire !

For I to thee and thine immortal name
In flowing numbers filled with sprite and flame.
Good, good, in flowing numbers filled with sprite
and flame.'

After this clever piece of satire, Jonson's vanity
and sourness, his stubbornness and perversity, are
all attacked. ' Thou hast such a villainous broad
back/ said Dekker, < that I warrant th' art able to
bear away any man's jest in England.' And in
accordance with the rules of the literary tourney
of the day, the writer of the Poetaster has person-
alities flung at him, and, among others, the brick-
layer episode of his life. Thus was Jonson
'untrussed.' He was attacked in his weak
points, and this episode is interesting as witness-
ing to the contemporary ideas of Jonson's genius
and to the methods of attack prevalent among the
literary men of the day.

But this controversy to all appearances did not
end here. Shakespeare is said to have been
embroiled to a moderate degree, though it is
easier to make this statement than to prove it.

Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida is a mysteri-
ous play. It offers many harsh disillusionings of
what were one's preconceived notions of the great
dramatist ; and for this very reason, however
paradoxical it may seem, the theory of his partici-

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 59

pation in the controversy is more tenable than
would otherwise have been possible. He who
was the soul of chivalry can scarcely be credited
with wantonly trampling on the glories of Homer.
It is equally hard to think of him, who gave life
to Cordelia, fathering a Cressida. So that the
play must represent the poet in no serious mood.
It is known that it was intended at first for
private circulation in MS. only. It was never in-
tended to be ' clapper-claw'd with the hands of the
vulgar ' or ' sullied with the smoky breath of the
multitude,' l as if the poet meant only those who
could read between the lines to get possession of it.
If this were true, it would explain in some measure
the irresponsible treatment of the Homeric heroes,
and would help one to accept the play as his contri-
bution to the Jonson-Marston controversy, which
raged during the few years succeeding 1599.

If this much be conceded, it is not altogether
difficult to account for the choice of subject.
Jonson and Dekker had both bandied words amid
classical scenes, Jonson choosing no less distin-
guished an arena than Rome in its golden era.
So that this play of Shakespeare's, in adopting
classical scenes and characters, was only falling
into line with the current convention,

1 See Preface to Quarto n., published by Bonian and Walley 1609.
This pirated edition caused the play to be produced on the stage
almost immediately.

60 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

With regard to Shakespeare's part in the con-
troversy it is more difficult to speak. It is hard
to say how far he waded into the flood of correc-
tion, advice, and abuse : indeed it is hard to say
which side he chose to support.

The figures of Jonson and Dekker stand out,
in Troilus and Cressida, in their disguises as Ajax
and Thersites respectively. Ajax is ' valiant as
the lion, churlish as the bear, slow as the
elephant/ * In him ' Nature had crowded her
humours ' — surely a plain hint of that contem-
porary who prided himself on being c one in
whom the humours and elements were peaceably
met/ 2 Thersites, whenever he opened his
6 mastic jaws,' 3 was for ever seeking out the
c incontinent varlets,' 4 cudgel in hand ; and at the
same time he gives full and ample description
of all cthe odious vermin that Nature ever
suffered to crawl on the face of the earth.' And
this is no bad picture of that writer (viz. Dekker),
who was wont to take his note-book into the
oddest of corners to obtain material for his
Bellman of London or his Guilds Hornbook.

But if Shakespeare stages in the play certain of
his brother playwrights, it by no means follows
that he sides with one, or makes any definite

1 Troilus and Cressida, I. ii. 20 ff.

2 Cf. the description of Crites in Jonson's Cynthia s Revels, u. i.

3 Troilus andCressida, I. iii. 73. 4 Ibid., v. i. 102.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 61

pronouncement on his contemporaries and their
conduct. Apparently he nurses no one cause
more than the other, nor does he belabour either.
He exhibits a 'brainless Ajax' and an equally
uncomplimentary Thersites.1 But as he is known
to have made no enemies by his travesty, this
neutral position might have been expected ; and
the probability seems to be that in his ' brainless
Ajax ' he reflected not Jonson himself, but the
Jonson of Dekker's Satiromastix \ and similarly
with Thersites, not Dekker himself but the
Dekker of Jonson's splenetic play.

If the play be taken, then, as a placard on the
theatrical controversy, the only possible inference
seems to be that it was Shakespeare's intention to
unfold the absurdities on both sides, to recall the
combatants from their bitter sport, and to per-
suade them to take up serious work again. Just
as the fatal attachment to perfidious women had
emasculated the valour of Homer's heroes, so,
Shakespeare hinted, the fruitless indulgence in
angry invective would lower the dignity and sap
the life of the English literary race.

The burlesque setting of a Homeric background
has been already sufficiently accounted for. But
the glamour of chivalry would have the further
merit of throwing ridicule upon the grandiloquent
manner in which the poets fought out their trivial

1 Troilus and Cressida, i. iii. 380.

62 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

fight. And it would also burlesque, by the way,
the Romantic adaptations of classical lore, so dear
to the Renascence scholar. It was not to bur-
lesque the Iliad nor yet the Fairy Queen ; only
the extravagances to which these masterpieces
gave rise under feeble pens.

If Troilus and Cressida, therefore, be considered
a pendant to this controversy of the dramatists,
these are the links by which it hangs. When the
actor Kemp describes Shakespeare as having given
' that pestilent fellow Jonson ... a purge that
made him beray his credit/ * it is probable that he
was thinking of the wholesome advice in Troilus
and Cressida, and this is none the less probable since
Shakespeare himself presents therein an ' Armed
Prologue/ in reply to that prefixed by Jonson to
his Poetaster.

Leaving now this atmosphere of controversy, it
is intended to inquire into the actual relations
which existed between Shakespeare and Jonson
as far as it is possible to know them. There is
always something of charm about a contempo-
rary's estimate of a writer that must ever be
wanting in that of posterity, even though the
latter has the advantage of perspective. The
good wine of a poet may reach posterity the
mellower for its years, but there is a warm tint
about growing grapes that passes with their day.

1 Return from Parnassus, Part II. IV. v.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 63

There is, however, conflicting evidence about
the intimacy of these two dramatists which makes
the question as difficult as it is interesting.

On the one hand it would seem scarcely doubt-
ful that Jonson was jealous of Shakespeare. He
seems to make opportunities of gibing at him and
his methods. In Every Man in His Humour he
invites his audience to witness with him a proper
play, in which they would need no wafting over
seas, nor would an army

* with three rusty swords

And help of some few foot and half-foot words
Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars/1

—evidently a sneer at Shakespeare's large treat-
ment of history.

He has a fling at Shakespeare's Caliban and
Winter s Tale when he promises elsewhere to his
audience that there should be no 'servant monster'
in his play, and that he was loth to frighten nature
in his plays like c those that beget tales, tempests,
and such like drolleries.'2 In several places, too,
he turns to ridicule a line in Julius C<sesar that
scarcely seems to deserve such treatment.3 In
one place he deliberately says of Shakespeare that
' he wanted art.' 4 But in spite of all this, with

1 E<very Man in His Humour, Prologue 9.

2 Bartholomew Fair, Introduction.

3 Cf. Jonson's Discoveries ' de Shakespeare nostrat.'

4 Conversations 'with Drummond.

64 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

the mermaid scene before one, and with Jonson's
generous tribute to his great contemporary in
those prefatory verses to the First Folio, it is
hard to believe that any real jealousy sundered
the two. It was a glorious wreath with which he
adorned the memory of the departed, when he
described him as 'Soul of the Age';1 and his
prophecy concerning Shakespeare's words, that
they were ' not for an age but for all time,7 throws
a halo of dignity round prophet and poet. ' I
loved the man,' he said elsewhere, * and do honour
his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any.
He was indeed honest, and of an open and free
nature ; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions,
and gentle expressions.' 2 These are not the
words of a small-hearted, narrow-minded man.

Moreover, what appear to be sneers in his works
may well be put down to bluntness of criticism.
c His wit was in his own power,' he said in refer-
ence to Shakespeare ; c would the rule of it had
been so too. Many times he fell into those
things, could not escape laughter.' This is his
direct criticism, and it corresponds in tenor with
the deprecatory remarks in his plays. But his
admiration ever rose above all cavilling, and he
acknowledges that this brother dramatist of his
' redeemed his vices with his virtues,' and that

1 Underwoods, xii.

2 See Discoveries ' de Shakespeare nostrat.'

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 65

< there was ever more in him to be praised than
to be pardoned.'

In addition to all this, there is a mass of testi-
mony as to the ample recognition of Shakespeare's
worth on the part of other of his contemporaries.

Webster, a dramatist singularly happy in
occasional phrase, commended him for * his
right happy and copious industry.' 1 Another
of those connected with the stage had seen ' his
demeanour no less civil than he (was) excellent
in the quality he professed. Besides divers had
reported his uprightness of dealing which argued
his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing
that approved his art/ 2 Meres had praised him
for his skill in tragedy and comedy, and placed
him 'among the most passionate ... to bewail
and bemoan the perplexities of Love.' Camden
included him among ' the most pregnant wits ' 3
of his time, while Drayton, after he had severed
his connection with the stage, wrote of him as
having c as smooth a comick vaine ... as strong
conception, and as Cleere a rage as any one that
trafiqu'd with the stage/ 4 Spenser referred to
him as Action,

* Whose Muse, full of high thoughts invention,
Doth like himselfe heroically sound ' ; 5

1 Dedication to Vittoria Corrombona.

2 Chettle, Kind-Harte 's Dream. 3 Camden, Remains (1604).

4 Drayton, Lines to Reynolds, Of Poets and Poesie.

5 See Colin Clout 's come Home again, 11. 444-7.

E

66 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

while Chettle, after Elizabeth's death, alluded to
him as ' the silver-tongued Melicert,' and grieved
that no ' sable tear ' had dropped from his c honied
Muse ' to bewail her loss. A shallower testimony
perhaps than all these, but still of worth, was that
of Gallic, the fashionable gallant in a well-known
play.1 He entreats the duncified world to esteem
Spenser and Chaucer if they would. ' I '11 wor-
ship/ said he, ' sweet Mr. Shakespeare, and to
honour him will lay his Venus and Adonis under
my pillow.'

But amidst all this chorus of praise there was
naturally a note or two of discord. ' His sweeter
verse contains hart-robbing life,' 2 wrote an un-
known contemporary, but, possibly ignorant of
the greatest works, he wishes that the subject of
his praise could content himself with graver
subjects and leave ' love's foolish languishment.'
Of earlier and later jealousy, too, there can be
no doubt. But Greene's well-known description
of 'the upstart crow' and of the conceited
' Shakescene ' 3 reflects rather the temper of the
writer than the character of his subject. Mar-
ston's allusion in his Histriomastix to

* When Troylus shakes his furious speare,'
as it stands in the context, also comes under the

1 Return from Parnassus, Pt. I. iv. i. 2 Ibid., Pt. II. i. ii.

3 Greene, Groatsworth of Wit.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 67

head of these discordant allusions. But, like
that of Greene, it goes no further than the idle
remark of a disappointed author.

There can be no doubt then of the contem-
porary high opinion of Shakespeare. The ravens
croaked, as croak they will ; but justice was done
to him in his lifetime, earnest of the fuller justice
which awaited him in the centuries to come.

Some of the contemporary opinions concerning
Ben Jonson came to light in the course of the
controversy already discussed. He is compli-
mentarily mentioned by Heywood as one c whose
learned pen was dipt in Castaly.' 1 There is
admiration, too, in what Webster said of him and
' his laboured and understanding works.7 2 Of
himself rare Ben said much, but he was scarcely
a fair critic. Another remark is immoderate in
the opposite direction. He was no ' mere
empiric ' 3 as Ingenioso would have it, c who got
what he had by observation.' He was * a slow
inventor,' but it was not advisable for him to
return to his old trade of brick-laying, as the
same critic maliciously hinted.

To Marlowe a fleeting homage is paid by
Shakespeare in a well-known passage ; and ' the
dead shepherd ' with his c saw of might ' 4 is one of

1 Heywood, Hierarchy of Blessed Angels.

2 Dedication to Vittoria Corrombona.

3 Cf. Return from Parnassus, pt. 11. i. ii.

4 As You Like It, in. v. 80.

68 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

the few to whom acknowledgments are made in
the Shakespearean text. According to another
contemporary, Marlowe was renowned for ' his
rare art and wit.' * But the best epitaph comes
from the unknown writer of the Return from
Parnassus, and is couched in a singular happiness
of phrase : —

4 Marlowe was happy in his buskin Muse,
Alas, unhappy in his life and end,
Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell,
Wit lent from Heaven, but vices sent from Hell.' 2

Greene is probably intended where allusion is
made, in Midsummer Night's Dream, to the ' thrice
three Muses mourning for the death of Learning
late deceased in beggary/ 3 Shakespeare was pro-
bably thinking of that brother artist — at one
time his bitter enemy and detractor, but to whom
he also owed many a merry scene and ' pleasant
quippe.' He had been described by another con-
temporary as having c in both Academies ta'en
degree of Master,'4 and this would connect
Greene with the c Learning ' so prominent in the
description. The allusion, however, has also been
thought to refer to Spenser, who died ' for lack of
bread' in 1599. But in this case the allusion

1 Hey wood, Hierarchy of Blessed Angels.

2 Return from Parnassus, Pt. II. I. ii.

3 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, v. i. 52.

4 Hey wood, Hierarchy of Blessed Angels.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 69

would necessarily be a later interpolation, for the
play in which it occurs cannot possibly be of so
late a date. Greene's works must have declined
in popularity as the sixteenth century closed. In
Every Man out of His Humour Carlo recommends
Greene as an author c whence (one) may steal with
more security ' ; l obviously on account of the
general want of acquaintance at that time with
what he had written.

Lodge, who had ' his oare in every paper boat,' 2
is thus happily alluded to by one dramatist ; the
merit of the description lying, of course, in the
fact that this versatile Elizabethan had ventured
up every lane of literature when the description
was penned, and was settling to his Galen and his
medicines after a career as poet, playwright,
satirist, pamphleteer, and novelist.

Spenser, like Shakespeare, found early recogni-
tion, though it was academic, not material success.
He was described in the Return from Parnassus as

' A swifter swan than ever sang in Poe,
A shriller nightingale than ever blest
The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome.'3

Even Jonson, who disliked his Shepherd's
Calendar, and could not help thinking that ' in
affecting the ancients he writ no language,' yet

1 See H. i. 2 Return from Parnassus, Pt. II. i. \\. 3 Ibid.

70 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

wished him to be read for his matter, 'just as
Vergil read Ennius.' 1 Critical as he was, Jonson
was certainly alive to the merits of this poet, and
it is with something like regret that he says else-
where that * if it were put to question of the
water-rhymer's works against Spenser, no doubt
the former would find more suffrages/

In the sixth sonnet of the Passionate Pilgrim y
Spenser, < with his deep conceits,' is also men-
tioned, and Dowland, that rare musician, c with
his heavenly touch.'

Nash was ' a fellow . . . whose muse was
armed with a gag tooth, and his pen possessed
with Hercules furies.' 2 Yet, in spite of his
Bohemian devilry, he won a softer touch from
the contemporary dramatist, who was constrained
to add :—

' His style was witty, though he had some gall,
Something he might have mended, so may all.'

Marston seems to have received blows from
others than Jonson. In the Return from Parnassus
he is called

4 a ruffian in his style

(Who) quaffs a cup of Frenchman's Helicon,

Then royster-doysters in his oily terms,

Cuts, thrusts, and foins at whomsoe'er he meets.' s

The c sweet, honey-dropping Daniel,' on the other

1 Jonson' s Discoveries.

2 Return from Parnassus, Pt. II. i. ii. 3 Ibid.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 71

hand, is lavishly complimented by the same writer
when he is credited with waging war with that
proud Italian who had melted his heart in sugared
sonneting. But this only illustrates the often
short-sighted character of contemporary criticism ;
for Daniel could scarcely meet Petrarch on equal
terms.

The venerable Holinshed, too, comes in for
contemporary notice ; but the dramatic reference
surely cannot have represented the average senti-
ment towards that c painful ' chronicler among
whose stores Shakespeare found so many treasures.
' Dunce Hollingshed,' and the ' Englishman who
wrote of shows and sheriffs,' are inadequate
descriptions of so reverend a man, and something
of impatience and intolerance clings to these state-
ments of Fletcher's.

Concerning Fletcher himself and his relations
with Beaumont, contemporary opinion was unable
to make any assertion. They made ' one poet in
a pair of friends/ l

( As two voices in one song embrace,
Fletcher's keen treble and deep Beaumont's bass/

And with this degree of discrimination the ques-
tion remains unanswered.

There yet remains a literary eccentric of the

1 Cf. Jasper Maine's lines, On the Works of Beaumont and
Hetcher.

72 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

time upon whose character the drama throws
some light. He had published an account of a
journey of his under the quaint title of Crudities
hastily gobbled up in Five Months' Travel in France,
Italy, etc., and more than one dramatist satirises
him. Fletcher does so, and in the Onos of his
Queen of Corinth, the heavy-witted weakling who
has made the grand tour hits off in perfect fashion
the eccentricities of Coryate ; and to fix the allu-
sion beyond all doubt, mention is made also of
4 the fork-carving traveller/ * the point of which
lies in that use of the fork, new to English ways,
but ostentatiously practised by the enlightened
Coryate after his stay in Italy.

Of the actors who were wont to interpret the
dramas, we get but little actual information in the
writings themselves. Perhaps ' poor Yorick,'
to whom Hamlet paid a tribute in the Danish
churchyard, was intended for Tarleton the comic
actor, the fool of King Lear, and the jester of
Twelfth Night, whose flashes of merriment, accom-
panied by pipe and tabor, were wont to ' set the
table on a roar, ... a fellow of infinite jest, of
most excellent fancy/2 cThe people began to
laugh,' said Nash, ' when Tarleton first peept out
his head'; and from Fuller's description it is
gathered ' that the self-same words spoken by
another would hardly move a merry man to smile,

of Corinth, iv. i. 2 Hamlet, v. i. 191 ff.

HIS DAY 73

which, uttered by him, would force a sad soul to
laughter/

To the famous trio, Lewin, Burbage, and
Kempe, all certainty of reference seems lost in
Shakespeare. Possibly it is Burbage who is
alluded to when Hamlet is described as c fat and
scant of breath ' ; for Burbage took the part and
was of corpulent build. Elsewhere, however, the
fame of Burbage and Kempe is implied when it is
stated that ' there Js not a country wench that can
dance Sellengers Round but can talke of Dick
Burbage and Will Kempe/ 1

A few stage directions also, contained in the
first editions of various plays, introduce us to
several actors whom we hardly know otherwise.
We find that John Wilson took the part of
Balthazar in Much ddo about Nothing, and sang
* Sigh no more, ladies,' that Sincklo was a beadle
in the drama of Henry IV., a keeper in 3 Henry
VI., and one of the players in the Introduc-
tion to The Taming of the Shrew. Humphrey, or
Humphrey Jeafes, is known to us in the same
way. He took the character of the second keeper
in Henry VL, and in this drama also one Gabriel
acted as messenger, and Nicke, probably Nicholas
Tooley, likewise played a messenger's part in the
Taming of the Shrew. The insertion of their
names would perhaps seem to suggest that

1 Return from Parnassus, Pt. II. iv. v.

74 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

Shakespeare was wont to associate in his mind
certain roles with certain actors, and would develop
them accordingly.

Besides paying rare tributes of recognition to
those who moved in the fierce light of the Court,
and to those who, like themselves, lived by the
pen, in some few instances the Elizabethan
dramatists seem to have had other contemporaries
in their mind while their characters were coming
to the birth, and these characters in consequence
were moulded on those personalities. Some-
times contemporaries were openly staged, as in
the instance of Stukely, already mentioned. The
play in which he is so treated is The Battle of
Alcazar, named after the battlefield where he
met his fate. He came of a Devonshire family,
and was placed by some enthusiasts, along with
great Charlemagne, as the type of chivalry and
courage.

Perhaps one of the most certain identifications
with regard to such characters is that of Shake-
speare's Shylock. During the earlier years of the
poet's life in London a Jewish doctor of Portuguese
descent, called Roderigo Lopez, was holding a
prominent position in the metropolis, and cannot
have been otherwise than well known to the
members of the theatrical profession. Most
probably the personage was the original of much
in the character of Shylock. It is a striking

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 75

coincidence that Antonio, the name of the Vene-
tian merchant, was also the name of a former
friend of Lopez, the Portuguese pretender,
c King Antonio,' who was ultimately the cause of
Lopez's downfall. The physician was implicated
in a plot to poison Elizabeth, and his trial and
execution brought to a head the slumbering hatred
of the people against men of his creed. So
Shylock was painted in all the grim colours that
the contemporary imagination had seen in Lopez.
He became the permanent scapegoat at which
might be hurled the execrations begun at Tyburn
when Lopez was executed ; and the treachery and
malice of the historic personality lived on for the
Elizabethans in the dramatic character which has
excited the wonder and sometimes the pity of
succeeding generations.

An equally certain identification seems possible
in the very different instance of the easy-going
Sir Hugh Evans, the Welsh schoolmaster of
Windsor. The original in this case was also a
Sir Hugh and a Welsh schoolmaster too. But he
lived in Gloucestershire, was possessed of much
quaintness, and his educational methods were
sufficiently remarkable to attract, not only notice
of a local kind, but also the attention of some
among the contemporary writers. From one we
learn that the historical Sir Hugh was accused
before the Mayor of his town of teaching false

76 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

Latin, and moreover that his boys profited little
or nothing by his teaching, whereupon ' hee told
their fathers that they should play at Cat, or
Spanne Counter, with all the boyes in the
Countrey.' l Such was this Gloucestershire par-
son, and that he had something in common with
the kindly pedagogue of Windsor will appear when
the latter dismisses William Page, who has shown
no very creditable acquaintance with Latin gram-
mar, with the words, * Go your ways and play :

go.'2

Sir Francis Drake is undoubtedly eulogised in
Dekker's play called "The Whore of Babylon, where
Titania (Elizabeth) is addressed as having sent
forth a Drake: —

' Which from their rivers beat their water-fowl,
Tore silver feathers from their fairest swans
And plucked the Halcyons' wings that rove at sea,
And made their wild-ducks under water dive
So long, that some never came up alive.'

This is obviously a reference to the Armada
defeat, and is one of the few instances in which
direct mention is made of that event on the stage.
In the same play the Armada's strength is detailed,
but the medium is prosaic verse. Elsewhere a
passing reference is made to the victory in a play

1 A Paradox in praise of a Dunce. 164.2.

2 Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. i. 78.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 77

called If You know not Me, where Elizabeth is
represented as receiving the great news at Tilbury
which had just come post-haste.

Whether Shakespeare meant the pompous
Justice Shallow to be a bold sketch of Sir Thomas
Lucy, has given rise to much discussion. There
can, however, be hardly any doubt that in the fussy
Gloucestershire magistrate one can see much that
calls up the Knight of Stratford and neighbour-
hood. The well-known pun about ' a dozen white
louses in an old coat ' x is certainly a squib aimed
at the Lucy family, whose arms, as Dugdale tells
us, were c three luces harrant en argent/ the
luce or pike being very abundant in that part of
the Avon which flowed through Stratford. When
the page expresses thanks for certain venison, the
Knight's meanness in ignoring the usual custom
of sending in occasional gifts to the corporation
is reviled. When Shallow threatens vengeance
for the riot, there is a reminiscence of * the ryot '
made by thirty-five Stratford men ' upon Master
Thomas Lucy, esquier.' So that it seems almost
certain that the Stratford incident is consistently
alluded to in this introductory scene of The Merry
Wives ; and if so, it must have left with the
poet far from bitter memories. Falstaff treats
with witty impertinence the injured Justice who
wished to ' make a Star-Chamber matter ' 2 of the

1 Merry Wives of Windsor, i. i. 2 /£^

78 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

offence, and here, perhaps, one listens again to
some of the quips which young Shakespeare had
exchanged with the grave Sir Thomas in the old
days. It is, at any rate, significant, that of all
Falstaff 's delinquencies, the only one which that
merry rascal is not punished for, is that of beating
the Justice's men, killing his deer, and breaking
open his lodge. The nature of the prank
warrants one in assuming that the poet was here
drawing on youthful memories. It was an ex-
crescence rather than a regular growth of the
original conception of that valiant knight, who
was more often witnessing to his greatness in
detected foibles than in successful lawlessness.

In Loves Labour Js Lost^ Armado, c the refined
traveller ' 2 from tawny Spain, is also clearly drawn
from a contemporary figure. He was that
* phantasticall Monarcho,' subject of an epitaph
by Churchyard, a familiar figure at the English
Court, and truly ' a most illustrious wight.1 3 He
was one of those whom, according to Meres,
' popular applause doth nourish, who gape after
no other thing but praise and glory.' According
to another contemporary writer (Nash), he c wore
crowns in his shoes, quite renounced his natural

1 See paper by Mr. Sidney Lee, ' A New Study of Love's Labour \r
Lost" (Genfs. Mag. 1880); also Fleay and Halliwell-Phillips' Memo-
randa to Lo*vis Labour V Lost.

2 Lwis Labour"* Losty i. i. 162, 172. 3 Ibid., i. i. 176.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 79

English accents and wrested himself wholly to the
Italian puntilios.' In Shakespeare this * child of
fancy/ l ' this fashion's own Knight,' was evidently
named after the Spanish expedition of 1588,
though Monarcho's own name is mentioned by
Boyet in connection with his ' Phantasime.' 2 The
surmise that Shakespeare intended Armado, * a
man of fire-new words/ 3 to be John Lyly, Moth
to be Nash, the curate Nathaniel the Rev. Robert
Green, and the pedantic schoolmaster Holofernes
to be the pamphleteer and pedagogue Cooper — all
this must be dismissed as futile. The reasons
advanced in its support are vague and conflicting.
Holofernes, it might be added, has sometimes
been identified with Florio, the distinguished
Italian scholar and translator of Montaigne, who
dogmatically assailed c the plaies that they plaie in
England.' But it seems far from likely that
Shakespeare would have ridiculed one who had
lived for some years in the pay and patronage of
the Earl of Southampton, to whom the dramatist
owed so much. It is also just as unlikely that the
pedant is intended for the schoolmaster Richard
Mulcaster, the great educationist of his day.

Other well-known personalities, however, that
certainly rise out of the dramatic pages are the
brother Shirleys — Sir Thomas, Sir Anthony, and

1 Loves Labour 'V Lost, I. i. 169 ff.

2 Ibid., iv. i. 99. 3 Ibid., I. i. 177.

8o SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

Mr. Robert. They have, in fact, a play l devoted
to their travels, for which three dramatists, Day,
Wilkins, and Rowley, were responsible. The
experiences of these brothers were very varied.
The eldest was a military man who, after some
privateering, fell into Turkish hands and was
with difficulty released. The others were con-
nected with Eastern diplomatic missions, and
were the first ambassadors at the Persian Court.
They won the gratitude of the Sophy of Persia
by advice in military matters, and received in
return great honour. The play, which embraces
all their travels, touches not only at the Persian
Court but also Russia, Rome, Constantinople,
Venice, and Madrid, and in this way forms a
notable instance of the widening interests of the
nation, while in the fact that

'all Persia sings
The English brothers are coe-mates for kings,'

the audience would feel, no doubt, a touch of pride.

Sir Thomas Gresham is alluded to in a play
called If Ton know not Me. The part he played in
founding the royal Exchange is hinted at, and the
College of the royal merchant too is mentioned,
which has, however, since decayed.

Hobson, the famous Cambridge carrier, is

1 The Travailes of the Three English Brothers, Sir Thomas, Sir
Anthony, and Mr. Robert Shirley.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 81

mentioned by Middleton where one of Hobson's
porters is represented as taking a letter from
young Tim Yellowhammer at Cambridge to his
respected parents in London — the same Hobson,
of course, who was wont to give such slender
choice of hacks to undergraduate applicants, and
whose familiar figure Milton honoured with a
place in his mighty verse.

Garnet the Jesuit is alluded to by the Porter in
that dreadful midnight scene at Macbeth's castle.
This Jesuit was tried in 1606, and attempted to
defend his doctrine of Equivocation, according to
which ' a lie which deceived was not immoral if
the speaker could mentally put a truthful sense
on the words actually used/ and, on the authority
of a great modern historian, * the popular feeling
against this doctrine found a voice in the words
of the Porter/

Bankes the showman is also mentioned by
Moth in Love's Labour V Lost in connection with
his famous dancing-horse. It was credited with
mysterious powers, and its position in the age can
be gathered from the fact that Raleigh saw fit to
mention it in his great History of the World.

The old woman of Brentford, whom Falstaff
impersonated in the basket scene of the Merry
Wives? was also an historical figure. She was
regarded as a witch, but was in reality the hostess

1 Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. ii. 164 ff.
F

82 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

of a tavern whose eccentricities earned for her
notoriety.

For different reasons was * Mistress Moll ' still
more notorious. Her real name was Mary
Frith, and in the Roaring Girl, Middle ton and
Dekker made of her as Moll Cutpurse a pathetic
principal. She was supposed to be the most
notoriously bad woman of the day. She is said
to have repented at St. Paul's Cross, but being
apparently in liquor at the time, some allowance
must be made for her after-conduct. Her case is
viewed with charity in the play already mentioned,
and the potentiality of virtue in things evil is the
moral of the play. She is frequently alluded to by
other dramatists, notably by Shakespeare,1 and
was evidently well fixed in the public eye.

In addition to this portrait-work in which
the dramatists thus indulged, there are also to
be found in their works occasional reflections
of striking incidents that formed part of the life
around them.

Nowhere does Shakespeare more successfully
reflect the glitter of an aristocratic function than
in his use of the masque to deck a certain courtly
marriage. That A Midsummer Night's Dream was
in the first instance a topical play of the kind
seems more than probable. Theseus wooing
Hippolyta ' with pomp, with triumph, and with

1 Twelfth Night, i. iii. 125.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 83

revelling ' forms the subject of the masque, though
one other incident at least is reflected. Into
the main subject, however, as into a frame,
is woven the anti-masque, which rests on the
drolleries of the Athenian mechanics, softened by
the sweet movement of the elvish fairies. Various
suggestions have been made as to the particular
wedding it was designed to celebrate. That of
Essex in 1590, of Bedford in 1593, of Derby in
1595, of Southampton in 1598 — all have been
suggested. There is no external evidence to
support the claims of any. The title-page of
neither Quarto alludes to the court performance
which must have been the original motive of the
poet's fancy. Perhaps the supposition that the
play was written for Derby's wedding festivities is
most probable from the point of view of dates.
For Bottom's suggestion that the lions in the play
within the play,1 might frighten the ladies unless
reassuring words were inserted in the Prologue,
refers unmistakably to an incident connected with
the christening of Prince Henry of Scotland.
This took place in 1594. A live lion was to have
figured there, but a Moon was substituted, as
being less dreadful for the spectators — an incident
which must have touched Shakespeare's humour
when his lungs were ' tickle o' the sere.'

Macbeth, the great Scottish tragedy, was doubt-

1 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, in. i.

84 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

less written in homage to the prince who ascended
the English throne in 1603 ; and in this play the
plotting of the Thane of Cawdor is a distinct
reminiscence of the Gowrie conspiracy, which dates
about this time. In 1 605 the dignities of Scone
were forfeited by the Earl of Gowrie, and Sir
James Murray was invested with them. (The
uncivil allusion of Chapman and Marston to this
personality in their Eastward Hoe has already been
mentioned.) In just the same way as the historical
forfeiture took place, so Duncan resolves that the
Thane of Cawdor should no more deceive his
4 bosom interest/ He therefore commissions
Ross to bestow Cawdor's honours on Macbeth.
The witches, too, play their part. They represent
the poet's attempt to clothe with flattering dignity
the unholy hags to whom the royal demonologist
consecrated so many pages.

The innovation which took place about this
time in dramatic circles, of creating whole com-
panies of children-actors, finds, as might reasonably
be expected, a reference on the stage. This new
departure had been successful in causing a schism
among the playwrights, and it seems highly
probable that Shakespeare viewed such childish
companies as that at the Chapel Royal with
extreme disapproval. The laborious Ben Jonson
would devote his time freely to instructing them
in their parts of his Cynthia's Revels, or The

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 85

Poetaster ; to teaching this eyrie of children how
to declaim his stilted verse, or to cry out his
intricate gibes on the top of their falsetto. But
Shakespeare no doubt felt that the youngsters who
did so berattle the common stage were not fit to
interpret the madness of his Lear, or the baleful
ambition of a Macbeth. For in Hamlet the
courtiers of Elsinore cast innuendoes on the
triumph of the children -actors who, when my Lord
Chamberlain's Company, in disgrace with royalty,
betook themselves to travel, carried off ' Hercules
and his load ' * (in other words, the Globe Theatre)
from Messrs. Burbage, Heming and Condell.
The Prince of Denmark — and one takes him to
be Shakespeare's mouthpiece in this instance —
could foresee the harm which would befall the
actor's profession in England from the furthering
of this novelty, and he points out that when the
children themselves become common players, they
would assuredly blame their patrons for having
made them, in their childhood, c exclaim against
their own succession.' 2

Another notable event of the time was that
voyage of Sir George Summers' to Virginia in
1 609, when his fleet was dispersed in the Atlantic,
and his own ship wrecked on the Bermudas.
Fragments of these distant adventures found their
way on to the stage at home, for during that

1 Hamlet, 11. ii. 366. 2 Ibid., 355.

86 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

calm period of his life when Shakespeare seemed
to have retired to some shadowy island to weave
romances, he still kept near to the movement of
English life, and no doubt eagerly read all in-
teresting details of foreign adventure. In his
'Tempest he obviously used hints of strange and
marvellous doings, which he had gathered from a
book by Silvestre Jourdain 1 relating to the events
of this famous voyage. This writer had formed
one of the crew, and his description of the Isle
of Devils supplied much romantic material ; and
though Shakespeare, in his usual way, improved
on his romance by creating the weird population
of Prospero's island, and by drawing a strong line
of contrast between man civilised and the savage
treacherous, yet the basis of topical truth under-
lying its conception remains apparent, even to the
mentioning of those c still-vex'd Bermoothes.' 2

Mention might also be made here of that picture
of the Carib worshipping the sun in Love 's
Labour's Lost.3 But this is only one of other
numerous instances where the dramatist speaks of
strange lands and illustrates the lasting impression
which the discovery of the New World and the
opening-up of its wonders had made on his

1 See A Discovery of the Bermudas, otherwise called the lie of
Devils, by Sir Thos. Gates, Sir Geo. Summers, and Captayne
Newport, and divers others, 1610.

2 Tempest, i. ii. 229. 3 Love's Labour's Lost, v. ii. 202.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 87

imagination. Raleigh's participation in colonial
enterprise, however, was apparently overlooked,
though there is one flying reference to ' Guiana,
all gold and bounty/ in the Merry Wives? an
allusion which would doubtless appeal to the
contemporary audience from the fact that Raleigh
had only just returned ; and another by FalstafF,
who sees in Mistress Ford a veritable West
Indian.

Besides using in this way much of the romance
and awful wonders that kept pouring into Eng-
land from over the seas, Shakespeare kept his ear
agog for municipal tit-bits, which then, as now,
were humour of the sort best described as
aldermanic. The immortal colloquy between
Dogberry and the Watch in Much Aao about
Nothing 2 is evidently the result of certain ponder-
ous municipal efforts in the way of legislation,
afterwards embodied in the ' Statute of the Streets '
in the year 1595.

When the clown says to Olivia in Twelfth
Night? that ' words are very rascals since bonds
disgraced them/ there is possibly an allusion
intended to the Privy Council's order of 1600-1,
according to which all play-houses except the
Globe and the Fortune were to be closed. It
was an order that laid no light bonds on the

1 Merry Wi<ves of Windsor ', I. iii. 67.

2 Much Ado about Nothing, in. iii. 3 Twelfth Night, m. i.

88 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

dramatists. The special enactment for the relief
of soldiers landing from over the seas is also
referred to in All's Well, where Lafeu turns
away from Parolles, c the man whom Fortune had
cruelly scratched,' with the words, ' There 's a
cardecue for you ! Let the Justices make you
and Fortune friends : I am for other business/ *
The Justices were called upon to give penniless
soldiers a new start in civil life.

There is also an allusion to the famous Poor
Law of 1 60 1 in Pericles y though it is not alto-
gether complimentary as to the success of its
working ; for when the fisherman drawing up
his net calls ' Help, master, help ! ' he also some-
what loquaciously adds, c Here 's a fish hangs on
the net like a poor man's right in the law, 'twill
hardly come out.' 2

In the play called Sir Thomas More, the rising
against foreigners on that black May-day of 1 5 1 7
has been thought to allude to the contemporary
discontent which arose in the city some seventy
years later; for the apprentices rose in 1586,
while ten years later saw other and more general
riots springing from the same cause.

The earthquake of 1 580 is alluded to by Juliet's
old nurse.3 It is for her a landmark of time.
The ' late eclipses ' 4 of King Lear probably relate

1 All V Well that Ends Well, v. ii. 35. 2 Pericles, 11. i. 1 1 6.

3 Romeo and Juliet, i. iii. 23. 4 King Lear, I. ii. 106 ff.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 89

to the sun's great eclipse of 1605, while the
* machinations, hollowness, and treachery ' of the
same passage allude to the Gunpowder Plot.
The abundant harvest of 1606 is probably hinted
at in Macbeth? where a farmer is said to have
c hanged himself on the expectation of plenty/
And strangest of all, the stranding of a whale on
the coast of Kent in the year '73 is probably
commemorated in 2 Henry IV .^ when the King
advises Clarence to blunt not young Henry's love,
but ' in his moods to give him line and scope till
that his passions, like a whale on ground, con-
found themselves with working.' 2

The invention of the movable topmast in
Shakespeare's own time is hinted at in the Tempest,
when the boatswain in the storm commands that
spar to be lowered ; 3 while the map engraved for
the English version of Linschotens Voyage (in
1598), in which India, Ceylon and the East is
more fully treated, is what is referred to in 'Twelfth
Night when Malvolio is said to c smile his face
into more lines than are in the new map with the
augmentation of the Indies.' 4 The map already
referred to was remarkable for its sets of lines.
Also when Jonson remarks * that carmen and
chimney-sweeps are got into the yellow-starch,' 5

1 Macbeth, n. iii. 2 2 Henry IV., iv. iv. 40.

3 Tempest, i. i. 37. 4 Twelfth Night, in. ii. 78.

5 Jonson, De<vil V an Ass.

90 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

he is alluding to a passage of contemporary history.
Yellow starch had been much used by fashionables
for bands and ruffs. It had been invented by an
infamous tire-woman called Turner, who being
implicated in the Overbury murder, was hanged
at Tyburn. She chose to die in a yellow ruff of
her own invention, and yellow starch in conse-
quence became so hateful that it ceased to be
worn except by the lowest classes of society.

Besides these fleeting reflections of English
contemporary life which were from time to time
inserted in the Elizabethan drama, there are some
which relate to foreign events and personalities, and
carry the interest of the audience beyond the
narrow seas.

Shakespeare's first undoubted play, Loves
Labour *s Lost, is filled with topical items of this
kind. Contemporary French politics play the
chief part, but Spain and even distant Russia are
enlisted to supply interest to this strange dramatic
medley of fact tricked out in Fancy's robes.1

The cause of the ' matchless Navarre/ 2 at whose
Court the scene of the play is laid, excited in
England the keenest sympathy, and, in fact, four
thousand volunteers under Essex had just swelled
his forces when the play was written.3 The three
courtiers who attend on Navarre in the play are

1 See paper by Mr. Sidney Lee, * A New Study of Loves Labour V
Lost" (Genfs. Mag. 1880).

2 Loves Labour ^s Lost, n. i. 7. 3 i.e. 1589.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 91

named after the three conspicuous leaders, the
Mareschal de Biron, the Due de Longueville, and
the Due de Mayenne (also called Du Maine).
The last of these was in reality at the head of the
League, and Shakespeare probably confused him
with a supporter of the rival cause. Motte, the
diplomatic page, that ' pigeon-egg of discretion,' l
seems to have been a reminiscence of the Comte
de la Motte, the popular French ambassador
in London ; while the mention of the ' Duke
Alen^on ' :J was perhaps a slight tribute to the
French prince of that name, the public and per-
sistent suitor for the hand of Elizabeth.

Of all the poet's intended identifications, how-
ever, that of Biron is one of the most complete
and satisfactory. Its original was the gallant
French marshal, and the portrait is pregnant with
points of resemblance. His well-known c rhodo-
montades, jactance et vanites,'3 are all re-echoed by
Shakespeare in his hero's extravagant bravery, his
' brilliancy replete with mocks/ 4 The relegation
of the hero to the hospital at the end of the play
may well be a remembrance of his own words :
' Je ne scay si je mourroi sur I'eschaffaut, mais je
scay bien que je ne mourroi qu'a Fhospital.'

The romantic journey of the Princess of France
has also an historic counterpart in the political

1 Lovis Labour ''s Lost, v. i. 72. 2 Ibid., n. i. 61.

3 Quoted as uttered by the King himself in Biographic Universelle,
* Lovis Labour "s Lost, v. ii. 833.

92 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

mission which in 1586 brought to St. Bris,
Catherine de Medici, and her 'escadron volant*
of seductive ladies, with the object of initiating a
political alliance between the Bourbon prince and
her son, the ' decrepit, sick ' l representative of
the House of Valois. The alliance took place
actually in 1589.

Yet another scene in the play is the dramatising
of an historic episode. The strained relations be-
tween the English and the Muscovite Courts at
the time when the play was being written, awoke
anew the interest in an event seven years past.2
The Russians disguising in Love's Labour's Lost
were suggested by an embassy from the Czar to
Elizabeth in 1583, with a view to obtaining one
of her kinswomen as a bride. The awkwardness
with which the Russian envoy, Count Pissemsky,
made his proposal, awoke the ridicule of the
courtly spectators ; and Lady Mary Hastings,
whom Elizabeth had selected for the honour, as
being of royal lineage, was known ever after at
Court as the Empress of Muscovia, although she
refused the imperial suitor. This is the historical
incident which the poet introduced by way of inter-
lude, though the masquerading of * the Prince
and his bookmates ' as ' frozen Muscovites ' ;

1 Cf. Love's Labour's Lost, i. i. 139.

2 Cf. Giles Fletcher, Of the Russe Commonwealth.

3 Lowe's Labour' *s Lost, v. ii. 264.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 93

is not a little whimsical, especially when it is
purposed to gain the favour of the ladies
thereby.

Other passing allusions to French events occur-
ring at the time are met with, in both the Comedy
of Errors and 'The Merchant of Venice. The former
was written, in all probability, very soon after
Love's Labour 's Lost, and in it Dromio describes
the contemporary condition of France as ' armed
and reverted, making war against her (i.e. his
mistress's) hair/ 1 alluding, of course, to the hostile
and aggressive position taken up by the League
against Henry of Navarre. In the Merchant
of Venice^ the reference is slighter ; but ' the
flourish when true subjects bow to a new-crowned
monarch ' 2 can probably be placed among these
allusions and assigned to the final entry of the
hero of Ivry into Paris as King of France.

In Lyly's Sapbo and Phao, also, there occurs an
allusion to the Duke of Anjou, who will be re-
membered as one of the Queen's suitors. His re-
jection is hinted at in the play, when Phao departs
from Sicily, the Queen (Sapho) of which island
he is deeply enamoured with. The departure of
Anjou was quite recent when this play was written.
There yet remain two plays, or double plays,
which present in some ways the most direct reflec-

1 Comedy of Errors, in. ii. 123.

2 Merchant of Venice, in. ii. 49.

94 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

tion of French events which marked the English
stage.

Chapman's Bussy d'Ambois and the Revenge of
Bussy deal with actual historical personages, and
with events which may well have been in the
memory of some of the audience. The story is in
itself a common one : ambition and love lead to
over-confidence and intrigue, and cause the fall of
a courageous adventurer. The fall of Bussy is
avenged by his brother Clermont. But the inter-
est arises not only from the intrigues depicted, but
also from the characters of Henry in., Alen^on,
Anjou and Guise, which move to and fro on the
stage.

In the Biron tragedies, the incidents would be of
still more interest to the audience, as being yet more
recent in date. The execution of Biron, Marshal
of France, only took place in 1602 ; so that there
was some reason for the displeasure of the French
ambassador at having this tragedy of his Court
set daily before gaping English audiences. The
knowledge of Biron's conspiracy against his royal
master was not confined to the French Court.
Elizabeth is said to have significantly pointed to
* Essexii caput ' when he visited her on an embassy ;
and though this point is not in the drama, yet
the whole event is generally well depicted, in-
cluding Biron's stubbornness in refusing to
comply with the generous conditions of Henry iv.
for a confession.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 95

The most interesting allusions to Spanish affairs
come, on the other hand, from the plays of Lyly.
Written as they were about the time of the great
Armada, one would naturally expect in them some
reference to so mighty an event. In his Midas,
Philip is unmistakably depicted. His delay in
despatching his fleet, long after the huge prepara-
tions were complete, is bitterly commented on by
a disappointed son of Spain, who complains c that
now when he should execute, be begins to consult,
and suffers the enemy to bid us good-morrow at
our own doors, to whom we long since might have
given the last good-night in their own beds ' — the
delay, of course, caused by the ' singeing of the
King of Spain's beard.' After the overthrow of
the great expedition, Philip, as ' Midas/ is repre-
sented as lamenting : c Have not I made the sea to
groan under the number of my ships : and have
they not perished, that there was not two left to
make a number ? ' l And throughout the play,
England is glorified, sometimes by implication,
elsewhere directly. It is proudly described as
Lesbos which ' the gods have pitched out of the
world, as not to be controlled by any in the world/ 2
This play of Lyly's gives what is perhaps the
most accurate picture of the events of '88 which
appeared on the stage. These are most definite
allusions to the ambitious Spaniard, who accord-
ing to Elizabeth herself wished to * make himself

1 Midas, m. i. 2 IbuL, v. iii.

96 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

king of the whole world.1 * Less certainly, though
still possibly, an allusion exists behind the figure
of great Tamburlaine as drawn by Marlowe : that
sacrilegious conqueror who fought for universal
power and compelled vanquished monarchs to
draw his chariot like * pampered jades.'

It is remarkable how small a part the people
who lived east of the Rhine played in English
politics and literature at this time. Theirs was
the soil in which grew to a fine ripeness the
Faustus and Fortunatus legends ; it was the
starting-point of much black magic, and of many
a most ' damnable historic/ but these were the
sole points of contact, and a reference to the
German people in Elizabethan times was nearly
always in connection with these matters. In the
course of Elizabeth's reign, however, there came
from the Rhineland a Count of Mompelgard,
paying a visit to the Court of Windsor. He
had the splendid satisfaction of cozening all
mine hosts of ' Readings/ of Maidenhead, and of
Colebrook, of their horses and money ; cozening
them by a royal permit which left the honest fellows
in a state of open-mouthed astonishment. There
was much humour in the incident, viewed in a
strictly disinterested light, and Shakespeare made
use of it in the Merry Wives of Windsor?' The

1 Elizabeth's words to the French ambassador, 1594.

2 Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. v. 76.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 97

result is that amusing scene where the loyal
host of the ' Garter ' is plunged into painful
perplexity on account of the 'three cozen-
germans' who had just left certain neighbour-
ing hostelries in such a flutter. In the first
Quarto the allusion is still more direct, the
' cozen-germans ' there being rather audaciously
called c cozen-garmombles,' which obviously is
but a thin disguise for the name of the noble
adventurer.

Attempts have also been made to identify the
County Palatine and the young German in the
Merchant of Venice with a Polish Palatine and the
Duke of Bavaria respectively. The former had
visited England in Shakespeare's time, had been
well entertained, but having contracted debts,
had left the country hastily. The Duke of
Bavaria, too, is known to have visited London
about the same time, and to have been made
a Knight of the Garter ; all of which affords
some evidence.

Of Dutch affairs Shakespeare has no mention,
unless there be one in the Twelfth Night. Fabian
there warns Sir Andrew Aguecheek that he has
sailed into the north of his lady's opinion, where
he would 'hang like an icicle on a Dutchman's
beard,' l unless he redeemed his cause by some
laudable attempt of valour or policy. In all

1 Twelfth Night, in. ii. 26.
G

9 8 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

probability a contemporary reference lay con-
cealed in these words, and Elizabethan eyes may
well have seen in them an allusion to the two
Dutchmen who sailed to the Arctic regions in
1596 and discovered Nova Zembla. Beaumont
and Fletcher, however, devoted a play already
mentioned to the fall of the great Advocate
of Holland, Sir John van Olden Barnaveldt,
in which a chapter of Dutch history is taken
and displayed on the English stage. But this
seems all. Elsewhere these same dramatists make
passing allusions to continental matters such as the
Cleves War and the murder of Maria de Medici's
favourite minister Concini, but these events take
the narrative beyond the age of Shakespeare, and
so lie without the range of the present intention.

In now reviewing what has been gathered from
Elizabethan plays, of a nature to help one in
reconstructing a picture of the age that produced
them, it will be seen, it is hoped, that material
of undeniable value offers itself for the purpose.
We can re-create the great Queen, proud yet
beloved, crafty yet winning, who made for unity
while claiming adulation ; re-create, too, some-
thing of her treatment of Essex, her dealings with
Leicester, and possibly catch glimpses of others at
her Court. If the glimpses are not many, it is
perhaps because the men who wrote, found no
great pleasure in labouring in a field where it

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 99

was criminal to look beneath the surface, and
where the places upon which the sun shone
brightest concealed the rankest weeds. We can
re-create James in all his royal weakness, as
superstitious as vain, indulgent towards favourites,
and halting in policy. We can learn the way
of the dramatists with their kind : much plain-
speaking, much heart-burning, with here and
there kind statements of a man's true worth.
We can re-create eccentrics like Monarcho and
poor Mistress Moll ; statelier forms like Drake
and Shirley ; contemporary incidents of domestic
import, some dainty with courtly dignity, some
breezy with travelling, some humorous and
parochial ; and incidents from the Continent also
of intrigue or absurdity.

These figures would form an invaluable fore-
ground to any picture. They touch on most of
the main arteries of life, and collectively would
go to restore, in no inadequate manner, the age
from which they are taken.

CHAPTER III

ON THE GENERAL ALLUSIONS OF THE ELIZA-
BETHAN STAGE

' Shakespeare gives to all nations the customs of England and to all
ages the manners of his own." — DR. JOHNSON.

Now that a certain number of personal references
and particular allusions have been seen to lie
curiously entangled in the network of the Eliza-
bethan drama, it remains to be shown that from
the same plays can be also gleaned some general
allusions which shall illustrate contemporary types
and local customs, as contrasted with the distinct
personalities and definite events of the particular
kind.

It has already been explained that while the
latter class owe their insertion to the definite
intention of the dramatist, general allusions
spring from no such cause, but are due to the
silent workings of sympathy between the drama-
tist and his age. They are due to an unconscious
assimilation of Elizabethan life — assimilation

arising out of an untiring observation. And

100

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 101

herein does the dramatist obey that constant
law emphasised by the most distinguished of
modern critics that ' the greatest poets and his-
torians live entirely in their own age.' l Ben
Jonson, too, made in effect the same criticism
when he transferred from Florence to London
the scene of his Every Man in His Humour •,
and at the same time gave English names to
his characters in place of Italian. He recog-
nised that, whether he desired it or not, his
characters would turn out to be English. He
felt that he could only touch humanity through
the medium of his own countrymen. 'Shake-
speare's mind/ Ruskin said truly, * was ever-
lastingly concentrated on his own age ' ; and
this was merely the first condition for the pro-
ducing of the highest work. For human nature
at its sources is one in all latitudes, and the
province of Art lies in depicting this humanity
truly and grandly, paying only a secondary
heed to the frame in which the subject may
present itself.

Had Shakespeare in his Merchant of Venice
posed as a Venetian, introduced us to magni-
ficoes on the Rialto, and led us among the
gondolas shimmering in the sun-bathed marshes
of the Adriatic ; had he spoken their language,
adopted their customs and donned their dress,

1 Ruskin.

102 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

we should have had more geography but less
art. If in his Julius C<esar he had led us to
Rome, and not shown us a dead Caesar on the
floor of the Capitol ; had he conferred no
mediaeval guilds on the Roman citizens, nor
represented the Triumvirs as meeting in Rome,
we should have had better history but a feebler
creation. Under the unerring guidance of his
masterly genius he was persuaded that his mission
lay in his own country, in his own age, in his own
time. His characters do not change with the
climate, for England colours all his creations.
Galatea obtained the divine gift of life only when
Pygmalion breathed part of his own breath of life
into his creation, and with his breath that part of
the age which he had absorbed into his being. So
are the characters of the great Elizabethan drama-
tists always Elizabethan, their manners and dress
those of the epoch, just as if the dramatists in
giving them life had of necessity given them
part of their own.

Their lovers are always the lovers of the day ;
their gallants, the gallants of ' the Queen's time ' ;
their soldiers, the followers of the gipsy earl in
the Netherlands ; their rustics, the inmates of a
Tudor village ; their citizens, the burgesses of
Tudor London ; their fools, those motley jesters
* guarded with yellow/ * whose bells jangled in

i Henry PIIL, Prol. 16.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 103

sunlit quadrangles, or along gloomy cloisters of
country mansions.

In their foreign plays the characters are still
of the Elizabethan stamp. English exquisites
parade the streets of Verona, English courtiers
haunt the palace of Rousillon, English peasants
bandy rough jests in the woods of Navarre.
English carpenters ply their trade in Caesar's
Rome, English billiards and cards are played in
Cleopatra's palace. Lancastrian England, with
its mediaeval feudalism, becomes in Shakespearean
histories the awakened England of the Renascence ;
and even in those plays which deal with a Britain
yet dark, there is the same Elizabethan tone and
colouring. Elizabethan nobles look on at the
white-haired Lear's sufferings under the iron
skies. It is Elizabethan splendour which decks
the palace of Cymbeline.

cFor what vestige of Egyptian character is
there in Cleopatra ? of Athenian in Theseus or
Timon ? of Old English in Imogen or Cordelia ?
of old Scottish in Macbeth ? — Shakespeare painted
honestly and completely from the men around
him/ l and therein lies the explanation both for
him and his fellows.

To this extent, then, did the Elizabethan world
of incident first exorcise the dramatists, and then
creep into absolute possession of their working

1 Ruskln.

io4 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

hours. The Elizabethan colouring was the only
condition on which the Romeos and the Hamlets
were to leave the seclusion of the studio, and
move about in the world outside as actual crea-
tions. The creator of Hamlet became universal
in his reach because he remained, under all cir-
cumstances and at all times, an Elizabethan.

So then it must follow that these contemporary
allusions of a general kind are not to be regarded
as unmeaning excrescences or sheer accidents in
the drama of the time. They are rather natural
growths, signs of the dramatists' absorption of
the spirit of their age, and indispensable accom-
paniments of human efforts to define the spirit of
permanent truth, as far as it lies in humanity. So
that although Shakespeare's psychological studies
apply to the race, although he was * not of an
age but for all time/ he was yet without incon-
sistency, or rather, one should say, he was of
necessity, a constant Elizabethan ; and so with
his fellows without exception.

It was of Sophocles that Matthew Arnold said,
he * saw life steadily and saw it whole/ but this
is, in even a greater degree, true of Shakespeare.
It is only natural to infer, therefore, that in his
works will run threads of all colours, taken from
all parts of the tapestry of life. His plays,
if they reflect faithfully the mind that wove them,
will depict scenes of country life and town life,

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 105

the professions and trades, Elizabethan homes
and amusements, the contemporary religion and
superstition, and whatever else a myriad-sided
life affords to the beholder. Details of such
appear not only in Shakespeare, but in all the
other dramatists to a greater or less degree. As
they were Elizabethan, so the scenes and the
atmosphere of their plays are pure Elizabethan.

Here then will be an immensity of detail for
giving a background to the proposed picture of
the contemporary life.

Country lifey in the first place, enters largely
into the scenes conjured up on the Elizabethan
stage. In the case of Shakespeare the treatment
is lavish, far more so than with any of his brother
playwrights. Shakespeare was a grown man when
he arrived in London first, nor had he had a
university varnish set on his original rusticity.
Throughout his life, moreover, he kept in touch
with his native town, as we know from his dealings
in real property. It is more than probable that
he would often leave his abode in dingy South-
wark or Aldersgate Street, and seek the repose
of the country, when he could spare the time in
the 'Deade Terme,' or when outbreaks of the
plague would close the theatres.1 He would ride
down to his Tusculanum at Stratford where his
twin-children were growing up, and spend ' a

1 Tempest, i. ii. 3645 Timon of Athens, iv. i. 21, etc.

106 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

July's day short as December ' l amid their fond-
lings and chattering gambols.

The attitude which he preserves towards rustic
life is consistently one of complete and humorous
sympathy. His studies of lower rustic life are
many-sided and vivid, and are couched as well in
a most kindly vein. He must often have stood
in the village ale-house, ' a chiel amang them
takin' notes,' while the humours that floated
around good people like old John Naps would
be quietly drenching him through and through.
All the blown dignity of village officialdom, all
the monkey antics of the youthful villagers, came
under his eye and pen. He seems to have
garnered from all sorts of places technical know-
ledge which many a farmer was wont to air on
market-days. Sports of all kinds he knew and
touched upon with all the faithfulness of detail
that the most zealous devotees would desire.
Their influence had penetrated deeply into his
being, for they are to him a never-failing source
of the richest metaphor. Festival days in the
country gave him rich memories of rustic revels
on Warwickshire greens, of punch-bowls cheer-
fully steaming away the discontent of a wintry
night. And these things never fail to glow again
at his will. He succeeds in hitting upon the
picturesque side of country life, just as Theo-

1 Winter's Tab, I. ii. 169.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 107

critus did, whose peasants move for ever in a
simple glory of Nature's own. There are times
when he sees that the country frowns on man.
There are days when

'Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When coughing drowns the parson's saw
And Marion's nose looks red and raw/

But the ways are not always foul. There are
seasons

* When daisies white and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,

Do paint the meadows with delight.'1

And the days when * maidens bleach their summer
frocks ' give the real aspect of the country, he
seems to say, for one who hath the true philo-
sophy in him ; the country with its ' marigolds
that go to bed wi' the sun/ 2 its ' daffodils that
come before the swallow dares/3 and its pale
primroses and bold oxlips, its c violets dim, but
sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes/ It was
certainly the one which lit up Shakespeare's town

1 See song, Love's Labour "s Lost, ad fin.

2 Winter's ^ale, iv. iii. 105. 3 Ibid., iv. iii. 118 ff.

io8 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

life with joyful anticipation of future repose. It
was undoubtedly the one which gladdened that
rascally Autolycus as he went humming with that
light heart of his over country stiles.

The vicissitudes which influenced the life of
the countrymen and farmers seem to have affected
the poet far more than the innumerable political
incidents which elicited such interest from every
Londoner. To Shakespeare, an earthquake, a
flood,1 a great frost,2 an eclipse 3 are things which
his memory marks with a red letter, just as
Mistress Quickly clings, woman-wise, to the
summer when the Court rested at Windsor
instead of at Greenwich.4

Of the squire and his ' moated grange/ of the
feudal lord, still a sovereign in his cmanor house/ 5
and who would roam for miles in his c pleasant
chase/ we are told but little. The only type of
the landed gentry, Justice Shallow, Armiger —
identified over and over again with the owner of
Charlecote as already has been said — has been
presented to us only as a petty squireen, who no
doubt would have * a hundred milch-kine to the

1 King John, in. ii. 3 and V. iv. 53 j also Romeo and Juliet, i. iii.
23, and Churchyard's Charitie (pub. 1595). There were great
floods in 1594.

2 Taming of the Shrew ', IV. i. 24.

3 King Lear •, i. ii. 106.

4 Merry Wives of Windsor, ii. ii. 60 (viz. 1603).
6 Lovers Labour V Lost, i. i. 204.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 109

pail/ and ' six score fat oxen standing in the stall.'
Shakespeare's satire is directed against the man's
character, and does not throw much light on the
life he led. Yet we can imagine him aping those
c manly exercises ' l for which England has always
been renowned, exercises which Orlando claims
as becoming to a gentleman and which Hamlet
forgoes only when he c loses all his mirth and it
goes heavily with his disposition.' 2 We can see
him at his table, ' sprinkled over with all manner
of cheap salads, sliced beef, giblets, and pettitoes,
to fill up room/ 3 discoursing on the f couple of
short-legged hens,' the joint of mutton, and the
* pretty little tiny kickshaws ' that William cook
has concocted.4 From other sources we may
glean that he loved hawk and greyhound more
than any mortal creature. c Were but a feather
of his hawk's train dispraised he would writhe his
mouth ' ; while a compliment on his horse would
make him a bondslave.5 He would ' disdaine
trafficke, thinking it to abase gentry.'6 He
would keep a chaplain to say prayers twice a day.7
But the chaplain's return would be small ; twenty
marks and board would be good allowance.

1 As You Like It, i. i. 72. 2 Cf. Hamlet, n. ii. 301.

3 Beaumont and Fletcher, Woman Hater, i. ii.
* 2 Henry W., v. i. 27 ff.

5 Cf. Return from Parnassus, Pt. II. n. vi.

6 Morryson, Itinerary.

1 Lupton, London and the Country Carbonadoed, p. 8.

no SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

Living around would perhaps be some * upstart
country knight ' who, through paternal industry,
had acquired his land. He would doff the name
of clown, but the look not so easily. His face
* would still bear the relish of churn-milk.7 Such
a one would be c guarded with more gold lace
than all the gentlemen of the country . . . and
yet would remain but the clod of his own
earth/ 1

In spite of scattered hints, however, no figure
of a Squire Western or of a Sir Roger glances
anywhere through the Elizabethan pages. They
seem lost to perception, though such typical
Englishmen must certainly have existed. But
perhaps it was because tenants and labourers were
more the friends of that dramatist, who loved the
country, than were the * neighbouring gentle-
men.2 By ' tenants and labourers ' must be
understood not those who would * take warning
a quarter of a yeare,1 and who had * always to
bring security ' wherever they intended to stay ; 3
nor those worthless peasants that * bargained for
their wives as market-men for oxen,' 4 but rather
pleasant day-women 5 like trim Jacquenetta ; * the
sunburnt sicklemen of August weary/6 the

1 Earle, Microcosmography , p. 17. 2 i Henry W., HI. i. 90.

3 Lupton, London and the Country Carbonadoed, p. 5.

4 i Henry PL, v. v. 53. 5 Love's Labour's Lost, i. ii. 129.
6 Tempest, i. iv. 134.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 1 1 1

trudging pedlar with his ballads in ' print o' life/
his silken treasury and c many laces,' 1 the market
folks that sold their corn ; ' the knitters in the
sun ' ; ' the free maids that wove their threads
with bones';2 and the prattling butterwomen
whose long Indian file wound itself at an amble
into Stratford market.3 A plain country fellow
would be a man of no great education. He
would be one ' whose hand guided the plough
and the plough his thoughts/ His habitation
would be ' some poor thatched roof, distinguished
from his barn by the loopholes that let out the
smoke/ He would be ' a terrible fastener on
beef/ His religion would be part of his copy-
hold which he took from his landlord. He would
go to church in his best clothes, but when there
* would be capable only of two prayers/ one for
rain, the other for fair weather.4

But more direct recollections than these are
recorded in Shakespeare's works — recollections of
the hamlets where in childhood he had passed
many a morning playing at All-hid,6 Cherry-
pit,6 Push-pin,7 Span-counter,8 Whipping a gig,9

1 Winter 3 Tale, iv. iii. 260 and 3545 2 Henry VI., iv. ii. 48.

2 Twelfth Nig At, n. iv. 45.

3 As You Like It, m. ii. 98 j All's Well that Ends Well, iv. i. 47

4 Earle, Microcosmography, p. 28 ff.

5 Lovers Labour V Lost, iv. iii. 78.

6 Twelfth Night, in. iv. 129.

7 Love's Labour's Lost, iv. iii. 166. 8 2 Henry VI., iv. ii 161.
9 Love's Labour's Lost, iv. iii. 164 (a top).

ii2 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

riding ' the wild mare with the boys/ l winning
youthful ladies at ' Leap-frog/ 2 or in winter
erecting painfully ' a mockery king of snow ' ;
around

* dirty Greton, dingy Greet,
Beggarly Winchcomb, Sudely Sweet/ 4

these would be his childhood's games played
in company with Kit Sly, f old Sly's son of
Burton-heath/5 with Peter Turf and Henry
Pimpernell. Later on in his teens, no doubt, he
would slip round, after some keen contest at the
butts, to Marian Hackett's ale-house in Wincot 6
and drain a cup of the renowned small beer.7
The ' great oes in chalke ' 8 that stood behind the
door would show up many a villager more than
' fourteenpence on the score for sheer ale/ 9 while
the ' History of Judith or Susanna, Dives or
Lazarus/ painted on the wall, would touch him
to laughter as he thought of the muddled pates

1 2 Henry IV. y n. iv. 250 (see-saw).

2 Henry ^., V. ii. 138.

3 Richard II., iv. i. 260.

4 Initial lines of a local rhyme enumerating the chief points of
interest in that part of Warwickshire. The country folk of the
immediate neighbourhood still credit the author of Hamlet with its
composition.

5 Naming of the Shrew, Induction, ii. 195 Burton-on-the-Heath,
the home of Shakespeare's aunt, Mrs. Lambert j Ibid., i. 96.

6 Wilnecote. 7 Cf. Sir Aston Cokain's letter (1658).

8 Rolands, Greenes Ghost, p. 22.

9 'Taming of the Shrew, Induction, ii. 23.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 113

that were nightly wont to lean thereon. Old
John Naps of Greece,1 with his very chequered
career, would there be gossiping with the fat ale-
wife, Marian Hacket, and twenty more such men
as he listening, all men of colossal thirsts. There
they would lean in various attitudes of social
good-humour, with a ' stone-jug* or 'seal'd quart12
at their sides. They would peer at all comers, and
greet their friends ' with a good thump on the
back/ accompanied by a ' blunt curse their
common salutation.'3 On the doorstep perhaps
would be lounging no less a person than Antony
Dull, the village constable, c a man of good repute,
carriage, bearing, and estimation/ 4 one with whom
' the ale-house had best hold correspondence/ for
he had ' command of four places of note, the
stockes, the cage, the whipping-post, and the
cucking-stool.'5 On parting with such a one,
the hostess or her daughter c would kiss him
handsomely/6 to draw him hither again the
sooner.

From his early youth Shakespeare's wonderful
power of observing and apprehending must have
applied itself to surrounding details. No poet has
ever brought together such a marvellous variety

1 Perhaps ' Dingy Greet.'

2 Taming of the Sfireiv, Induction, ii. 90.

3 Earle, Microcosmography. 4 Love's Labour ""s Lost, i. i. 262.
5 Lupton, London and the Country Carbonadoed, p. u.

« Ibid., p. 9.

H

n4 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

of sketches and pictures, metaphors and allusions
drawn direct from Nature's workshop, or from
the most diverse forms of man's industry and toil.
Nowhere is he found repeating those classical
similes and images which are the common property
of merely talented authors.

The tod of wool from every c 'leven wether '
that ' yields pound and odd shilling,' * the compost
on the weeds,2 the gardener's dibble,3 and the
grinding quern,4 have as few secrets for him as
the technique of hawking, hunting, angling,
coursing, manege-riding, or archery.

Hawking was the national sport of the age, and
technical terms with regard to that particular
branch, as well as those relating to the chase, were
considered as a necessary part of the vocabulary
of every well-bred Englishman. 'Why, you
know,' said Ben Jonson, c an a man have not the
skill in the hawking and hunting languages nowa-
days, I '11 not give a rush for him.' 5 Shake-
speare's illustrations in this field were more
frequent and accurate than those of any other
playwright. Petruchio likens his wilful mistress
to those kites * that bate and beat and will not be

1 Winter's Tale, IV. ii. 32.

2 Hamlet, m. iv. 151.

3 Winter's Tale, iv. iii. 100.

4 Midsummer Night's Dream, n. i. 36.

5 Every Man in His Humour, i. i. 47.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 115

obedient.' 1 Love-sick Juliet sighs for a falconer's
voice to lure her tassel-gentle back again.2 And
when Othello under lago's subtle pressure begins
to doubt his Desdemona, the words of his
maddened anger are : —

' If I do prove her haggard,

Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings,
I *d whistle her off, and let her down the wind,
To prey at fortune.' 3

An allusion to the common way of controlling
fractious hawks. That ' horn and hound ' exer-
cised their stirring attraction on the poet there
can be no doubt. Theseus' Spartan breed —

* With ears that sweep away the morning dew,
Crook-knee'd and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls,
Slow in pursuit but match'd in mouth like bells'4 —

are those same hounds which the sportsmen of
the day followed, two successive days, over ditch
and hedge, across hill and vale — hounds of which
now the nearest approach in type is the * deep-
mouthed' basset.5 Silver and Bellman and Echo
would be among ' the cry,' 5 picking out the
dullest scent, careful only not to * overtop ' the

1 Taming of the Shrew, iv. i. 191.

2 Romeo and Juliet, u. ii. 160. 3 Othello, in. iii. 260.
* Midsummer Nighfs Dream, iv. i. 125 if.

5 Cf. Taming of the Shrew, Induction, i. 20 ff.

n6 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

chase. They would be out as soon as the
cheery ' Hunt 's up * l had rippled through the
morning air and made the huntsmen spring
from their sleep c with a hey, and a ho, and a
hey nonino.' 2

In his woodland plays, Shakespeare gives a host
of the ' divers and sundry tearms of art ' used by
those who worshipped at Diana's shrine in his
day — such as a buck of the first head, a pricket,
a sorell, a bracket, and a lean rascal. Of fox and
hare the country squire would know enough c to
furnish fifteen meales with long discourse in the
adventures of each.' 3 Oftentimes the sportsman
would get near his prey under cover of ' a stalking
horse/ while when ladies wished * to play the
murderer,' buildings, concealed by bushes, would
be raised in parks whence they might shoot with
their cross-bow at the deer as they raced by.
Much of the knowledge would be gained by the
dramatist in those * bosky acres ' 4 of Charlecote,
where he had often struck a doe with the help of
his curt-tailed dog, and ' borne her cleanly by the
keeper's nose/ 5 His array of woodland know-
ledge cannot do otherwise than call up the darling
practice of another Midland poet, who in his

1 Romeo and Juliet, HI. v. 34. Cf. Douce, Illustrations of Shake-
speare. l Hunt 's up ' was the tune to awake the huntsmen.

2 As You Like It, v. iii. 18.

3 Stephen's Essays, Bk. ii. 6.

* Tempest, iv. i. 81. 5 Titus Andronicus, 11. i. 94.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 117

Sir Gawayn and the Grene Knight wrote so vividly
and accurately of the chase as he knew it.

At a time when the Thames would still yield
salmon and pike, angling was a widespread sport ;
and it is clearly one of the angling contests
between keen fishermen of the various British
rivers, that Shakespeare has in mind when he
makes Cleopatra wager on her angling, and Char-
mian twit the Egyptian Queen with the same.1

The * fawning greyhound in the leash ' formed
another notable feature of country life under the
Tudors. We find in Shakespeare, not only would
the sportsmen start * the timorous flying hare/ 2
with a loud and wild * So ho ! ' 3 and course her
down to where they had * pitched a toil ' ; 4 but on
Cotsall they would have matches, and bets as to
the merits of the various famous dogs.6 Page's
fallow greyhound would be sometimes unexpectedly
outrun by some dog * as swift as breathed stag/ 6
and perhaps bred by little John Doit of Stafford-
shire, or Will Squele the * Cots-ol'-man.' 7

Similarly, innumerable instances might be de-
duced from Shakespeare's plays showing his

1 Antony and Cleopatra, n. v. 16.

2 Venus and Adonis, 674. 3 Two Gentlemen of Verona, in. i. 189.

4 Lo*vis Labour V Lost, iv. iii. 2.

5 Merry Wi*~ves of Windsor, i. i. 90.

(i Taming of the Shrew, Induction, ii. 49.

7 ^ Henry IV., m. ii. 23. The Cotswold Games were revived by
Captain Dover, having been instituted at an earlier date.

n8 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

complete and ready acquaintance with all the
details of horsemanship and horse-breeding. But
that particular branch of equestrian art, the
manege, which was so popular with all the best
families of the time, since the knowledge of it
went to make c a compleat gentleman/ l attracts
from him but scant attention. Orlando, it is true,
has a word about it as an enviable but unnecessary
accomplishment. But when we know that all the
lusty youths of the country would revel in
making ' the great horse ' gallop the galliard, do
the capreole, the chambretta, and dance the cur-
vette,2 it is curious, perhaps, but significant also,
that the poet should have dwelt so slightly on the
4 bound and high curvet of Mars's fiery steed.' 3

A subject more congenial to him was that of
archery. It elicited, it will be remembered, a
whole treatise from the solid wit of Roger Ascham,
schoolmaster. The use of the bow and arrow
was intimately connected with birding and fowling,
and many an hour did the boys of Warwickshire
spend on the watch for the painted wings of the
pheasant hidden in the brake, in order to c thump '
him on his appearance with their short thick
' bird-bolts.' * On his return the successful fowler
would be 'clapped on the shoulder and called

1 Cf. Gervase Markham, The Compleat Gentleman. 2 Ibid.

» Airs Well that Ends Well, n. iii. 282.
4 Love's Labour's Lost, iv. iii. 22.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 119

Adam ' l after Adam Bell, the famous outlaw of
the old days. The youth ' that shot so trim '
would no doubt develop into a skilful archer
whose < loosed arrows ' 3 would seldom < miss the
clout,' 4 but ' cleave the very pin.' 5 While
drawing he would shout his warning to all to
c stand wide of the bow-hand,' 6 and near the butts
would be stationed a marker who ' gave aim/ 7
that is, showed where the arrow alighted. Wide
must have been Shakespeare's experience in this
field. Indeed, under the influence of Ascham's
YoxophiluSt the old English practice, which the
goodly scholar describes not only as an honest
pastime and wholesome exercise, but also as a
branch of military exercise, this practice had
regained some of its pristine greatness. So it
comes about that the poet's allusions to this branch
of country divertisements are more plentiful than
to any other subject. In the plays of Dekker and
Middleton, and most of all in those of Beaumont
and Fletcher, terms of archery often occur, yet
none of Shakespeare's contemporaries seem to
have been so much impressed as he was himself
by the renascent sport.

1 Much Ado about Nothing, i. i. 251.

2 Romeo and Juliet, n. i. 13. 3 Henry V., i. ii. 207.

4 Ho-iv a man may choose a good wife from a bad (Dodsley,
Old English Plays, vol. ix. p. 23).

5 Romeo and Juliet, n. iv. 15. 6 Lo<ve*s Labour "s Lost, iv. i. 134.
7 <The City Gallant.

120 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

The labours of the rustic and the sports of
the lusty yeomen in Elizabeth's reign are not the
only reminiscences to be found in Shakespeare's
works of the life which his compatriots led at
the wane of the sixteenth century. A welcome
rest would come for them now and again with
one of the many festivals and ' gaudy nights ' * -
the remains of Popish sway over the old Catholic
England. There would be New Year's Day with
its gifts2 of oranges stuck with cloves, and with
its wassail scenes, ' when roasted crabs hissed in
the bowl.' 3 Then Shrove-Monday with its sweet
collops,4 and Shrove-Tuesday with ever-tasty
pancakes.5 Then sheep-shearing,6 when lamb-ale
would turn many a merry man's head, and
children would stuff their cheeks with ' warden
pies, and mace, and dates, and prunes, and a race
or two of ginger.' 7 After this would come May-
day with its masquerade of morris-dancers around
the painted pole : and the Whitsun Pastorals8 with
their old-fashioned show of mysteries. Later on,
Michaelmas9 and the harvest-home, with the merry
music which accompanied the last load of corn ;

1 Antony and Cleopatra, in. xi. 183.

2 Merry Wives of Windsor, in. v. 8.

3 Love"1* Labour's Lost, v. ii. 915 j crab apples.

4 Winter's Tale, I. ii. 137.

s Airs Well that Ends Well, n. ii. 23.

6 Winters Tale, iv. ii. 37. 7 Cf. Ibid., 48 ff.

8 Ibid., 133. 9 Merry Wives of Windsor, i. i. 200.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 121

and later still, on the eve of cold November,
Hallowe'en with its puling beggars.1 Then at
Martlemas a dim ray of sunshine would light up

* St. Martin's summer, halcyon days,' 2 and at
last, Christmas carols and Yule-tide's ' pious
chansons ' 3 would bring every one back again to

* shoeing the mare, hoodman blind, hot cockles,'4
flapdragons,5 the wassail-candle,6 and the punch-
bowl which had inaugurated the year.

All these festivals and a few more beside, such
as Lammas-tide, Holyrood-day, and Easter-tide,
are mentioned by Shakespeare. But none is dealt
with in such loving detail as the merry-making
which took place in summer when every little
village had 'her batchilers and damosels tripping
deftly about May-pols.'7 Bells8 and ribbons,
rings and napkins, were gaily flaunted as their
owners moved : 9 while a nosegay pinned on his
hat and a good suit of Lincoln green on his back
made every yokel feel in lordly vein. Then was
the hour for Tib and Tim to tread a gay measure
and to indulge in a ' gallimaufry of gambols ' 10 on

1 Two Gentlemen of Verona, u. i. 23.

2 i Henry 71., i. ii. 131. 3 Hamlet, n. ii. 423.

4 Middleton, Father Hubbard's Tales, p. 81.

5 Love's Labour V Lost, v. i. 45. 6 2 Henry 17., i. ii. 157.
7 Dekker, Dead Terme, p. 22.

* Return from Parnassus, in. ii. (Dodsley, O. E. P., ix. 164.)

9 Beaumont and Fletcher, Women Pleased, iv. i.

10 Winter s Tale, iv. iii. 333.

122 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

the green to the strains of the * Three-man song-
men ' ; l and swiftly past the shocked Precisians
would they sweep, who coldly sang 'psalms to
their hornpipes/ 2 So with the blowing of horns,
with mumming and flower-strewing and with
riding of hobby-horses 3 would the revel proceed
— a sight of Merry England which ever grew
fainter as the Puritans grew stronger ; for a
time was coming ' when the hobby-horse was
forgot.' 4

Farther down the green would meanwhile be
standing a knot of spectators applauding c the
delightful ostentation75 as a whole, or else ad-
miring the pageantry of ' the Nine Worthies.' 6
Another bunch of heads would be gathered around
a quintain 7 post, or around the rustic's game of
draughts called the nine men's morris, played
by the yokels on ground-cut squares. Elsewhere
they would be crowding round wiry William
Visor of Wincot as he ' turned his girdle,' and
challenged sturdy Clement Perkes of the Hill 8 to
settle their dispute in a friendly wrestling match.
Such impressions of ' the very May-morn of his
youth,' 9 Shakespeare never forgot, and as late a

1 Winter's Tale, iv. ii. 45. 2 Ibid., 47.

3 Ben Jonson, Every Man out of His Humour, n. i.

4 Cf. Hamlet, in. ii. 143.

5 Love's Labour^s Lost, v. i. 108. 6 Ibid., v. i. 149.

7 As You Like It, i. ii. 246.

8 2 Henry 17., v. i. 42. 9 Henry V., i. ii. 120.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 123

play as The Winter s Tale contains lively reminis-
cences of Jacob and Phillip's smiling feast.1

The poor pelting villages, the sheep-cotes and
mills, the vineyards and fallows, the meads and
hedges, which lay outside the towns, are never
described in detail ; neither are those ' bosky
acres and unshrubbed downs,' 2 more picturesque
than useful. The high-roads were wont to be but
rarely repaired. Travelling was a hardship owing
to 4 the foule and cumbersome ' ways. Bridges
were often little more than planks, and poor Tom
might well feel proud of heart at riding on c a bay
trotting horse over four-inched bridges/3 Over
these highways, however, would go the packet-
carrier, always a man of many letters. From
post-house to post-house would he pursue his
tedious way, but quickening the pulse of the
countryside as he went ; and if he ever sought
' horseway or footpath,' 4 all the greater need for
caution against the highwayman's ' Lay-by.' 5
He would meet very often those poor heart-
broken creatures who went from door to door
with their clack-dish or alms-dish, those sordid
beggars who but seldom ' upon entreaty have a
present alms/ and whose horn, that alms-drink

1 Cf. also Measure for Measure, m. ii. 203. St. Philip and St.
James were the patron saints of the ist of May.

2 Tempest, iv. i. 81. 3 King Lear, in. iv. 56.
4 Ibid., iv. i. 56. 5 i Henry IV., i. ii. 36.

i24 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

ought to fill, was most often dry. He would
know those hapless vagrants upon whom the
vigorous Tudor rule pressed hard ; the beggar
bearing her brat upon her shoulders, and many
other such cases of misery undiluted. Sometimes
English gipsies would cross his path and hasten
his pace with their scowl. For they were c red-
ochre rascals umbered with soot and bacon, who
were wont ' to lie in ambuscade for a rope of
onions, as if they were Welsh freebooters.'1
And sometimes he, no doubt, would overtake
the pedlar with his * silken treasuries/ humming
gaily as he crept by the hedges, and having
accompanied him to the next village, would
listen awhile to him wheedling the rustics with
his enticing

' Come, buy of me, come : come buy, come buy;
Buy, lads, or else your lasses cry.' 2

This then is something of the rustic England
of Shakespeare's day. These were some of the
passing reflections which he contrived to catch
amid scenes where Nature was most bountiful.
It was a gallant picture, but its golden visions
were doomed to fade before the dour looks and
heavy sword of Cromwell when he came.

Perhaps these very May-games which have just
been mentioned, with their songs full of buoyancy

1 Middleton and Rowley, Spanish Gypsy.

2 Winter's Tale, iv. iii. 230.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 125

and their boisterous masqueradings, helped to
arouse in the youthful Shakespeare the impet-
uosity of his poetic feeling, and prompted him to
carry the wanderer's staff' through London gates'1
to where on a wider stage he could evolve golden
dreams of humour and philosophy. The year
1585 or 1586 is generally supposed to have been
the time of Shakespeare's hegira, when he left the
reposeful country life for the hurry of the town,
and commenced his work under the new condi-
tions of London life. London and its ways are
well reflected in his works. If he can write as a
native of England's Midland county, he is also
able to feel himself one of London's adopted
sons. To him London proved, as to Spenser,
' a most kindly nurse ' ; and the whirling metro-
polis, in which he spent so many of his best years,
won from him not a little of that affection it is
yet wont to receive from those who live within
hearing of its tireless hum. He never felt it in-
cumbent upon him to rail at the city's ' riot, pride,
and sumptuous cheer,7 or to warn it to c spend less
at board and spare not at the door.' It is true
he never goes out of his way to mention any
places, neither does he handle the familiar place-
names of the city with the same fondness as Lamb
at a later date betrayed. But his attachment is
evidenced, nevertheless, on the numerous occasions

1 2 Henry VI.t iv. viii. 24..

126 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

on which he brings into his dramas vivid one-
word descriptions of well-known localities. He
brings his Vanity Fair before the footlights in his
own way, and paints glowing pictures of tavern
life, with its orgies and its brawls. He sketches
dainty gallants and their mincing mistresses with
unfaltering and unerring touch. Buckram rogues
and shady rascals in great plenty and variety come
sneaking by on his stage. He sketches their
absurdities, and to all the queer characters who
thronged the city pavements he is for ever holding
up faithful mirrors wherein they may see their
own unhappy contortions. With the numerous
shades of Elizabethan purple he is as familiar as
a fashionable tailor, and he consistently displays
an expert's acquaintance with all the details
of ladies' wardrobes. He knows all the follies
of gilded youth. No quaintness of bearing was
too absurd, no grandiose utterance too empty, for
his pen to touch with a lively humour. The
gaunt author of Piers the Plowman must often
have stalked up the Cornhill, eyeing with sub-
dued indignation the well-furred and the sleek.
Shakespeare, without doubt, trod the same beat
for the whetting of his wit and for the indulgence
of the secret Puck that was harboured within him.
Other Elizabethan dramatists also add strokes
innumerable to the picture of London life.
Scarcely one but takes off a gallant or describes a

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 127

custom, for all lived in London, and from London
drew their characters.

Shakespeare was barely past twenty when he
left the quiet Warwickshire lanes ; yet the con-
trast between the thronged streets and his old
haunts appears not to have made much impression
on his mind.

'In every street/ said Dekker, 'carts and coaches
make such a thundering as if the world ran on
wheels ; at every corner men, women, and children
meet in such shoals that posts are set up on pur-
pose to strengthen the houses, lest with jostling
one another they should shoulder them down.' 1

But whereas nearly all the writers of the age
have a word of surprised sarcasm or censure for
the noise and turmoil throughout the metropolis,2
the ragged mob that haunts the Forum after
Caesar's death, is the only instance in which
Shakespeare has actually represented the madden-
ing strife of the city.

London itself and its various quarters are only
mentioned incidentally, so far as they come to the
poet's mind in connection with an event or point
of his dramas. Like all other sides of his know-
ledge, his acquaintance with the town and its
inhabitants is only shown piecemeal, here and
there. Nowhere is there a direct presentation of
the English capital during the reign of the last

1 Dekker, Seven Deadly Sins, p. 50. 2 e.g. Stubbes, Gosson, etc.

128 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

Tudor sovereign. Glimpses, however, are caught
of St. Paul's,1 with its gallants and its serving
men ; of the truncheoning and Tribulation of
Tower Hill ; 2 of the druggist's c needy shop ' at
Bucklersbury 3 ' smelling sweet in simple time ' ; *
of Haliwell, near Shoreditch, with its consecrated
Fount ; 5 of Pie-corner and its sadlers,6 and its
poor ' taking in their meal of steam from cooks'
stalls ' ; 7 of Smithfield and its jades ;J of Holborn
and its strawberries ; 8 of the melancholy Moor-
ditch 9 and the low haunts of Turnbull St. ; 10
of Clement's Inn,11 with its mad students ; the
shady quarters of Pickt-hatch in Clerkenwell ; 12
the warlike Mile-end, the exercise ground for city
soldiers ; Finsbury, the resort of citizen archers ; 13
the fashionable Strand,14 with Eastcheap,15 old
Jewry,16 the City Mills17 and Cheapside.18

These are some of the most familiar place-
names that occur.

1 z Henry IV., i. ii. 52. 2 Henry VIII. , v. iii. 52 and 61.

3 Romeo and Juliet, v. i. 42.

4 Cf. Merry Wives of Windsor, in. iii. 70.

5 Measure for Measure, iv. iii. 98. 6 z Henry IV., n. i. 28.

7 Alchemist, i. i. 8 Richard III., in. iv. 32.

9 i Henry IV., i. ii. 82. 10 2 Henry IV., in. ii. 311. " Ibid., 15.

12 Beaumont and Fletcher, Knight of the Burning Pestle, v. i.

13 Every Man in His Humour, i. i.

!* Henry VIII.,v. iii. 55. Cf. Middleton, Father Hubbard's Tales,
p. 77. 15 i Henry IV., i. ii. 135.

16 Every Man in His Humour, i. ii.

17 Coriolanus, \. x. 31. 18 2 Henry VI., iv. ii. 74.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 129

What struck the poet more was apparently
the gulf that separated the rustic simplicity of
manners, dress, and speech from the studied
affected whims and denizened wit that pervaded
equally the Court, the city, and the camp.

With the quaint manners of London society
as they came before him time after time, he must
have been astounded. Those young gentlemen,
' who would be sad as night, only for wantonness/ l
sad, moreover, * with a too odd, as it were, too
peregrinate/2 melancholy, must have excited in
him a healthy laugh. And he would doubtless
laugh at such ideas as that £ true melancholy
would breed your perfect wit ' ; or that your man
in melancholy could ' overflow ' into * half a score
of sonnets at a sitting/ He would know that a
traveller's talk was a choice after-dinner entertain-
ment at the houses of the great, while the
knightly host would suck his teeth and catechise
' my picked man of countries/8 But he must often
have wondered why such travellers felt it incum-
bent upon them * to lisp and swear strange suits ' ; 4
to place such faith * in tennis and tall stockings ' ; 5
and to exhibit as the main trophies of their travels
* Spanish blocks, French compliments, and German

1 King John, iv. i. 16.

2 Lowes Labour 's Lost, v. i. 15.

3 King John, i. i. 193.

4 As You Like It, iv. i. 37.
6 Henry PIIL, i. iii. 30.

I

130 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

healths/1 He makes Touchstone and Rosalind
laugh heartily at such perverted exquisites in
the Forest of Arden ; and elsewhere and by
other hands ' these new tuners of accents ' 2
are held up to scorn. Their absolute trust
in these ' trim vanities ' and in the virtue of
travelling was everywhere a common cause of
laughter. They are described as doing little more
in life than < enhancing the daily price of tooth-
picks and making sharp beards and little breeches,
deities.'3 Lying, too, was the mark of the
seasoned traveller, and Fletcher makes one of
his characters confessedly lie in order to prove
his qualifications for that distinction.4 The apish
nation of Englishmen < limped in base imitation
after the report of fashions in proud Italy,' and
were constantly being censured for it by the wiser
of their fellows. ' An Italianate Englishman is
an incarnate devil,' wrote Ascham, and Bishop
Hall in his duo Vadis supports the charge.

The ' pretty fellows ' of the time would give
plays and suppers and issue loud invitations to
acquaintances out of their windows as they rode by
in coaches. Sir Amorous La-Foole 5 had a lodging
in the Strand for this very purpose. He would

1 Beaumont and Fletcher, faithful Friend, I. i.

2 Romeo and Juliet , n. iv. 30.

3 Beaumont and Fletcher, Queen of Corinth, u. iv.

4 Fletcher, Fair Maid of the Inn, n. ii.

5 Cf. Jonson, Silent Woman, i. i.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 131

watch when ladies were gone to the china houses
so that he might meet them by chance and give
them presents — to be laughed at. Such picked
gentlemen would ' tell their ladies stories, usher
them to their coaches, lie at their feet at masques,
and applaud what they found laughter in.' 1 They
would learn ' the tricks to make my lady laugh,
when she 's disposed1 ; 2 they would be ever prone
to * make a leg/ put off their caps, kiss their hands,
and say nothing.3 When they were wooing they
would follow after True wit.4 If the lady loved
wit, they would give her verses — borrowed from
a friend. If valour, they would talk of their
swords. If activity, they would often be visible
on their barbaries, or leaping over stools for the
credit of their backs. If she loved good clothes,
their coats would be their dearest acquaintances,
and they would take more thought for the orna-
ment than for the safety of their heads. They
would admire her every fashion, would be ever
comparing her to some deity, and would invent
dreams to flatter her. If she were great, they
would always perform second to her ; like what
she liked, and praise what she praised : and
would take it for the greatest favour if she would

1 Beaumont and Fletcher, Queen of Corinth, I. ii.

2 Lovers Labour's Lost, v. ii. 466.

3 Cf. Airs Well that Ends Well, ii. ii. TO.

4 Cf. Jonson, Silent Woman, iv. i., Truewit to Clerimont.

1 32 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

vouchsafe to leave her civet-box or her sweet
gloves behind her. For ' a wench to please a
man comes not down dropping from the ceiling as
he lies on his back droning a tobacco pipe.' l

When not in feminine society they would flower
their little knowledge with ' sweet damn-me's/ and
betray their lack of wit by replying to jests, c ever
good i' faith/ 2 or if of a personal nature, ' bitter
i' verity, bitter/ 3 They would pray to be shielded
from the sin of blushing, would ' undo ' many
tailors, seek many quarrels and go near to fighting
one,4 and would laud foreigners at the expense of
their compatriots. ' We are famous/ said Chap-
man, ' for dejecting our own countrymen/ 5

A fashionable host would protest much in con-
versation, and affect melancholy after the French
fashion.6 He would c not smile beyond a point/
lest he should ' unstarch his look/ and his guests
on their departure would receive but feeble hand-
shakes. If he were literary, he would, like Sir
John Daw,7 dismiss the literature of the world in
a few well-chosen phrases. Plutarch and Seneca
might be to him ' grave asses ; a few loose sen-
tences ; that 's all ' ; Aristotle, c a mere common-
place fellow ' ; Tacitus might be c an entire knot ' ;

1 Ben Jonson, Silent Woman, iv. i., Truewit to Sir Dauphine.

2 Chapman, Mons. D1 Olive. 3 Ibid.

4 As You Like It, v. iv. 47. 6 Chapman, The Ball, in.

6 Cf. Beaumont and Fletcher, Queen of Corinth.

7 Ben Jonson, Silent Woman, n. ii.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 133

Homer, * an old, tedious, prolix ass that talked
of curriers and chines of beef* ; Virgil, c of the
dunging of land, and bees.'

If he had been a courtier he would pride him-
self on having trod a measure, flattered a lady,
been politic with his friend and smooth with his
enemy.1 He would be of the tribe of gal-
lants and ' dapper Jacks ' made in the schools of
fashion. But Nature, when she was pleased,
made him otherwise. ' I cannot make you
gentlemen,' said Beaumont, * that 's a work raised
from your own deservings ; merit, manners, and
inborn virtue does it.' 2

The country knight would often travel to
London in his roomy caroch,3 or in his quiet
ambler, ' to learn the fashion/4 and would straight-
way set about emulating the feats of the town
exquisites. He would learn how to walk before
a lady, and how to bear her fan with dignity,
how to kiss his hand5 with effect, how to
catechise,6 or with a good starched face to
pick his teeth when he could not speak.7 He
would learn how to walk the streets 'his
humours to disclose/ 8 He would have to

1 As You Like It, v. iv. 42. 2 Beaumont, Nice Valour, v. iii.

3 Cf. Ben Jonson, Devil is an Ass, iv. ii.

4 Dekker, Gulfs Horn Book, p. 259.

5 Lovers Labour V Lost, iv. i. 145. 6 King John, I. i. 192.

7 Cf. Ben Jonson, Every Man out of His Humour, i. i.

8 Rowlands, Letting of Humours Blood in the Head*<vayne.

1 34 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

bestow some ' time in the tongues/ l and study
for many a painful hour the art and science of
neat quotation, and how, with well-placed words,
to dissolve my lady's riddles.2 Unless he were
content to remain a carpet knight,3 he would have
to acquaint himself with 'Saviolo his art and
phrases,' and would have to front ' passes and
stoccadoes,' * like a true sword-and-buckler man.5
He would repair with this intention to some Low
Country soldier 6 and see him foin and traverse ; 7
pass the punto, stock, reverse, and montant ; 8 and
learn the rules by which to give and take the lie.
He would learn to take an insult when one
' familiarly disliked his yellow starch/ said that 'his
doublet was not exactly Frenchified, or drew his
sword and said it was ill-mounted/9 Then honour
would lead him on — according to Saviolo. He
would also have to acquire the nimble galliard,10
lavoltas high and the swift corantos,11 the lively
canary and Spanish pavin,12 the French brawl,13 the

1 Twelfth Night, i. iii. 92.

2 Cf. Beaumont and Fletcher, Elder Brother, HI. v. 5 and Queen
of Corinth, I. ii. 3 Twelfth Night, in. iv. 242.

4 Merry Wives of Windsor, n. i. 217.

5 i Henry W., i. iii. 230.

6 Lupton, London and the Country Carbonadoed.

7 Merry Wives of Windsor, n. iii. 24. 8 Ibid., n. iii. 26.

9 Fletcher, Queen of Corinth.

10 Henry V., i. ii. 252 j 'Twelfth Night, i. iii. 139.

11 Henry V., HI. v. 33.

12 Middleton, Blurt, Master-Constable, iv. ii.

13 Love's Labour V Lost, in. i. 9.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 135

quick capers of a cinque-pace,1 and all the subtle
games of the English dancing school, which were
Sir Christopher Hatton's first steps to the Wool-
sack, and * to which the Grecians are most
prompt and pregnant.' 2 Besides these ' lofty
lavoltos and tricks of intemperance,1 he would
see other measures and ' dances of order and
comeliness/3 At the end of a galliard the gallants
would fetch two or three fine capers aloft in
taking leave of their mistresses ; 4 and he, like
many others disliking such passages, would pro-
bably prefer the ' passy-measures ' 5 of French in-
novation. All, however, were highly prized at
Elizabeth's Court, and therefore would be worth
learning even though they seem to mean with
Shakespeare not much more than the pale delight
of an Aguecheek.

Though Shakespeare never definitely draws
the picture of a pretty gentleman,6 who wore out
six fashions in four terms, yet he has plainly studied
all the dress details of such a one. The ruff,7
adjusted so carefully with poking sticks 8 of steel,

1 Muck Ado about Nothing, n. i. 74.

2 Troilus and Cressida, iv. iv. 86.

3 Two Wise Men and all the rest Fools, vi. i.
* Chapman, A Humorous Day's Mirth.

5 Twelfth Night, v. i. 206. Corruption of the Italian ' passo-
mezzo.*

6 Fletcher, Elder Brother, HI. v. 7 Pericles, iv. iii. 105.
8 Cf. Marston, Malcontent ; Winters Tale, iv. iii. 226.

136 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

the doublet of changeable taffeta,1 the short satin
cloak,2 the damask-coloured stock,8 and yellow
stockings and cross-garters,4 the new ribbons to
his pumps,5 the two Provincial roses on his razed
shoes,6 his side sleeves, his hose and slops 7 are all
introduced at different times. The gallant's daily
visit 8 — his debt to society — would ever be made in
a new suit. His breath with sweetmeats would
be tainted, his face adorned with black velvet
patches variously cut.9 With civet10 would he
perfume his hands, with Neapolitan scent sweeten
his person, and beautify the beautiful by the
wearing of a nosegay.11 His collar would rise
up ' so high and sharp as if it would have cut his
throat.'12 His spurs would be gilt, his boots em-
broidered, while his points and jetting plumes
would eloquently announce his high distinction.
His chevril gloves13 would be dressed on either
side. His short Italian hooded cloak might be
' larded with pearls ' ; in his Tuscan cap might
shine a jewel ; his bombast lining would ensure

I Twelfth Night, ii. iv. 74. 2 ^ Henry IV., i. ii. 30.
3 3 nuelfth Night, I. iii. 133. 4 Ibid., n. v. 170.

5 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, iv. ii. 34. 6 Hamlet, in. ii. 279.

7 Dekker, Gulfs Horn Book ; Love's Labour's Lost, IV. iii. 59.

8 Fletcher, Elder Brother, in. v.

9 All's Well that Ends Well, iv. v. 96.
' 10 As You Like It, in. ii. 63.

II Midsummer Nighfs Dream, I. i. 34.

!2 Middleton, Father Hubbard's Tale (vol. v.).
13 Twelfth Night, in. i. 13.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 137

his bulk and consequently his importance. His
noblesse compelled him to wear garters of gold or
silver, for ' men of mean rank wore garter and shoe
roses worth more than five pounds/ His pouncet-
box he would hold tenderly 'twixt his finger and
his thumb, which ever and anon he would give
his nose.1 Prudence might hang small balls of
pomander around his neck, to protect his person
in time of plague ; but he would jauntily display
a dancing rapier2 and make a brave show as he
advanced to his hostess, after dismissing his link-
boy at the door.

He would be barbered many times a day.3 His
hair would be well frounst with the curling- iron.4
He might affect the * mowchatowes ' turned up
like two horns towards the forehead.5 His beard
might be in form ' a spade or bodkin, a pent-
house on the upper lip, or an alley on the chin.' 6
It could curl like a ball or have dangling locks
like a spaniel. The moustache would be sharp at
ends, but it could hang down to the mouth like
goat's flakes. But to wear a bushy beard was to
be an outcast. His beard might be dyed straw-
colour, orange-tawny, or purple-in-grain,7 but it
was well, at all costs, to be bearded ; and, if Nature

1 i Henry IV., i. iii. 38. 2 Titus Andronicus, n. i. 39.

3 Antony and Cleopatra, n. ii. 229.

4 Greene, Quips for an Upstart Courtier (1592).

6 Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses. 6 Lyly, Midas.

7 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, I. ii. 89.

138 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

had denied him, the barber would supply him.
Such a picked fellow would have not a hair nor an
ornament but what it had its due place and perfect
appointment. He would ' draw out his pocket-
glass thrice in a walk, and would more admire
the good wrinkle of a boot, the curious crinkling
of a silk stocking, than all the wit in the world/ l

French fashion-mongers were wont to < sweat
out their brains ' devising new fashions for such.
It was thus that they made ' the giddy-pated
Englishman ' consume his revenues. The block
for the gallant's head-gear altered in form faster
than the felt-maker could fit him ; and ' for this
reason/ quoth Dekker, ' are we called in scorn
blockheads/ A passing craze was that of ear-
rings.2 It was a custom, however, that did not
last ; and love-locks on the forehead tied with
ribbons 3 were scarcely more lasting. These trim
gallants were, in short, things whose souls were
' specially employed in knowing where best gloves,
best stockings, and waistcoats curiously wrought ' *
were sold. Their favourite haunts were milliners'
shops ; the art of shopping their chief accomplish-
ment ; and c for these womanly parts,' quoth a
contemporary, ' they are esteemed with gentle-
men/ These were typical gallants. The ' humor-

1 Return from Parnassus, Pt. II. HI. iv.

2 Fletcher, Woman Hater.

3 Fletcher, Cupid" s Revenge, i.e. a favourite lock of hair brought
before and tied with ribbon. Against this fashion Prynne wrote
'The Unlweliness of Lo<ve -locks. 4 Chapman, All Fools*

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 139

ous' gallant could be more unsightly still. CA
rook ' would think to affect an humour by wear-
ing a pyed feather, a cabled hat-band, or a three-
piled ruff, a yard of shoe-tye, a Switzer's knot on
his French garters, which would be * more than
most ridiculous/ l He would, in short, do any-
thing and think it adequately accounted for, by
stating that it was his humour.

In speech the gallants would be ' drawling,
affecting rogues ' 2 when, indeed, they could be
induced to throw off their nighted colour of
melancholy. They would be * lisping, affecting
fantasticoes,' 3 who would stand much on form and
sometimes ' affect the letter ' 4 to attract attention.
Their dress, gaudy in colour, fantastic in style, found
its counterpart intellectually in the craze for Gon-
gorism which existed in fashionable circles. A
'rare, compleat, sweet, nittie youth15 would cherish,
' odd quirks and remnants ' 6 of the wit of a Lyly
or a Harington, and would lard his conversation
with their borrowed brilliance. Odd lines from
the classics would be recklessly handled, for many
such exquisites had 'a learned tendency,' and
though ' they spoke no Greek ' 7 they would c love
the sound on 't.' To ' talk of stones and stars,

1 Ben Jonson, Every Man out of His Humour, Prol.

2 Merry Wives of Windsor, n. i. 140.

3 Romeo and Juliet, n. iv. 29. 4 Love's Labour V Lost, iv. ii. 56.

5 Marston, Satire 3 (1598).

6 Much Ado about Nothing, n. iii. 237.
1 Fletcher, Elder Brother, n. i.

1 40 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

planets, fishes, and flies' ; to play with words and
idle similes, and all on the least provocation, was
evidence certain of a fertile wit and cultured mind.
Euphuism in itself was used by the scholars, and
rightly used, produced passages of striking beauty.
Shakespeare laughs at the mode in his ' camomile '
passage, aimed at the degenerate Gongorism in the
person of Armado. With such ' paper bullets of
the brain ' and with such faded humour did these
gallants bolster up their barren wit. To speak as
Nature gave them utterance would have been
more than plebeian, and therefore when in love
they would, like Lyly's Sir Tophas, ' feel all Ovid
de arte amandij and would expand to a page what
required no more than a brace of words.

The vagaries of these * strange flies, these
pardonnez-mois ' who stood so much on the new
form that they could not sit at ease on the old
bench/ 1 were, in their turn, taken up by their
mistresses. That fine lady, whose health he would
drink kneeling, and for whom he would drink off
4 candles' ends for flap-dragons/ 2 too, aimed
at gallantry and bravery of dress. ' If men got
up French standing collars/ said Dekker, 3 ' the
women would have (them) too ; if doublets with
little thick skirts — women's foreparts are thick-
skirted too.' Ladies' raiments and fads were no

1 Beaumont and Fletcher, Coxcomb, i. v. Cf. 2 Henry IV., v. iii.

2 2 Henry IV., n. iv. 249. 3 Seven Deadly Sins, p. 59.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 141

less gorgeous and innumerable than those of the
gay younkers who buzzed around the Queen.
The various parts of costume and dress mentioned
by Shakespeare would suffice to have robed in
fashionable apparel the Queen herself; though
during a prolonged stay of the Scotch envoy,
Sir John Melville, at her Court, she produced
every day a dress of some different country, and
her wardrobe contained over two thousand gowns,
with all things answerable.1 And culling from
the poet's works we should find ample material to
adorn her

'With silken coats, and caps, and golden rings,
With ruffs, and cuffs, and farthingales, and things ;
With scarfs, and fans, and double change of bravery,
With amber bracelets, beads, and all this knavery'2

from the ' tailor's ruffling treasure.'

The details pertaining to ladies, such as their
golden quoifs and stomachers, the new sits for
their ruffs, and their odd tires or headdresses of
' Venetian admittance,' their ivory-handled fans

and

1 Lawn, as white as driven snow ;
Cyprus, black as e'er was crow ;
Gloves, as sweet as damask roses ;
Masks for faces, and for noses ' ; 3

these things are frequently found with the creator

1 Chamberlaine's Epistolary Notices in Harington's Nuga Antique,
ed. Park, vol. i. p. 118.

2 Taming of the Shrew, IV. iii. 55 ff. 3 Winter's Tale, iv. iii. 220 ff.

1 42 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

of Juliet, Portia, and coquettish Beatrice. But
all their artful kickshawes,1 their brooches and
owches,2 their intertissued robes of gold and
pearl, their pinked porringers3 and high chopines,4
their false hair ravished from the dead,5 their
pomanders and table-books,6 the perfumes on
their breath,7 their aglet-babies 8 and pet monkeys,9
their squirrels, and their parrots, — these are hardly
ever described by Shakespeare, much less ridiculed.
Other contemporaries might laugh at their c little
crowne hats' so blown about, their great deep
ruffs, their farthingales 'which so like breeches
stood about them/10 the great sleeves and bom-
basted shoulders. They only appear in Shake-
speare as illustrating some feature of a heroine,
or characterising in precise terms the appearance
of a meaner personage, some maid-in-waiting or
companion, who, with other authors, would have
been but a dim and lifeless shadow. Such feminine
garniture as c the velvet cambricke silken feather'd
toy,'11 the head-gear and mantles, cthe coronets
and tires of several fashions, the girdles, spangles,
rebatoes and tiffanies,' 12 the carnation ribbon,13

I Twelfth Night, i. iii. 214. 2 2 Henry IV. , 11. iv. 48.
3 Henry 7111., v. iii. 47. * Hamlet, n. ii. 434.

5 Merchant of Venice, HI. ii. 98. 6 Winter 's Tale, iv. iii. 603.

7 Romeo and Juliet, i. iv. 76. 8 Taming of the Shrew, I. ii. 79.

9 Merchant of Venice, in. i. 120. 10 Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses.

II Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 8th ed., fol., p. 294.

12 Rowlands, Look to It, or I *le stabbe Ye.

13 Love's Labour V Lost, in. i. 146.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 143

the * muffs, falling bands, and periwigs * ' as well as
* the glittering caules of golden plait ' 2 were daily
railed at from pulpit and from stage. One
Member of Parliament feelingly protested to the
House ' that women carried manors and thousands
of oak-trees on their backs/ and every husband
knew that each Royal Progress inaugurated a
new fashion. But however much Shakespeare
rated the male frivolity of his day, he always
speaks indulgently, when he speaks at all, of the
sumptuous trifles with which the noble ladies
would array themselves. Perhaps it was the dark
lady of the sonnets, Mary Fitton, if such indeed
were her name, who conveyed to her poet-lover
the secret that, under a vain Queen the ladies of
the Court must needs be ever beautiful, and, if
necessary, beautified ; and also that to them c the
diamond of a most praised water,' 3 and ' coral
clasps and amber studs ' 4 were as natural append-
ages as tawdry lace and a thrummed hat 5 to the
shepherdess Audrey, or lockram to the kitchen
malkin.6

As to the manners of these dames of 'high
admittance,' they were the outcome of the same
age as produced their sumptuous dress. The
lady, ' full of comparisons and wounding flouts,' 7

1 Rowlands, Look to It, or I "le stabbe Ye. 2 Restituta, vol. iii. p, 256.
3 Pericles, in. ii. 102. 4 Passionate Pilgrim, 366.

5 Cf. Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. ii. 76. 6 Coriolanus, u. i. 222.
7 Lovers Labour V Lost, v. ii. 834.

i44 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

would ' carve ' l or make signs of favour with the
hand to the gallant she wished to encourage.
She would use good mouth-filling oaths, for they
well became her. Feeble exclamations would be
left to ' comfit-makers' wives ' and * rascally yea-
forsooth knaves/ 2 She used no paint, as a rule,
to bedaub and falsify herself, as did the ladies of
Italy, but would rejoice if her hair were fair ; for
raven locks were out of favour at the Court of
the Virgin Queen. She would hack the Queen's
English right well in conversation with a gallant,
and would keep pace with him in all his excur-
sions into regions of florid absurdity. A mask
of rich taffeta would conceal her identity in a place
of public resort, and the conceal use of a mask
was a fine point in coquetry. Those of her kind
would throw their ' sun -expelling masks ' away,
however, and

'Commit the war of white and damask, in

Their nicely-gawded cheeks, to the wanton spoil

Of Phoebus' burning kisses,'3

when processions thronged the streets to honour
warriors returning from abroad.

In the wake of these Court ladies followed a
crowd of unworthy parasites who vainly tried to
move at the same pace, and who, clad in garments
of silk and satin, tried to mould their manners after

1 Merry Wives of 'Windsor ', i. iii. 43.

2 i Henry W., in. i. 250 ; 2 Henry IF., i. ii. 36.

3 Coriolanus, n. i. 229 ff.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 145

those of their betters. The would-be fashionable
among city dames would * line a grogram gown
clean through with velvet/1 eat cherries only at
an angel a pound, and thereby arouse the envy of
her neighbours, the scorn of the well-born. But
with her * mincing niceties, her durance pettitoes
and silver bodkins/ all patience would be lost,
and the tongues of all her more stay-at-home
sisters would thereupon be loosed to express their
disgust and give vent to their feelings.

Separated from all these by impassable barriers
of class distinction came the lower ranks of
society. There were the rogues in buckram and
camlet suits and clouted shoon ;2 the more respect-
able, but scarcely more cleanly, wearers of greasy
aprons, dowlas shirts3 and buff jerkins.4 There
were the Sunday citizens with their velvet guards 5
and plain statute-caps/ — the hard-working trades-
men of those times, who, together with their
hopeful apprentices, had but one ambition, and
that was the Alderman's thumb-ring.7 They could
only snatch a passing hour occasionally to play
at bowls,8 or loggats, to bet at tray-trip 10 with

1 Chapman, Eastward Hoe ! i. iv.

2 i Henry IP., n.iv.zoij Henry mi.,v.i\i.%%; 2 Henry ri.,iv.ii. 189.

3 Antony and Cleopatra, v. ii. 210 ; i Henry W., in. iii. 71.

4 i Henry W., i. ii. 48. 5 Ibid., in. i. 261.

• Lovers Labour'' s Lost, v. ii. 281. 7 i Henry W., ii. iv. 342.

8 Cymbeline, n. i. 54. 9 Hamlet, v. i. 94.

10 Twelfth Night, n. v. 197.

146 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

costermongers, or to stake their Edward shovel-
boards.1 Sometimes the elders would go and
cry aim to the Finsbury archers 2 as loyal citizens
should, or watch ' Arthur's show ' 3 at Mile-End
Green, while the rowdies of the apprentices would
go hack at a football.4 Gallants like Bassanio
and Benedick, gay and reckless, were ever at
liberty to pursue pleasure. They could always
spend an hour in bowling-alleys trying to make
' bias and thwart ' 6 answer their aim in spite of
all rubs. There they would be liable to meet
with ' attendant rooks/ who would prove their
betters and win with advantage. On the bowl-
ing-green would be seen a variety of postures.
Some would wring the neck or lift the shoulders
after they had set the bowl rolling ; others would
clap the hands or lie down on one side, while others
again would run after the bowl or make long
dutiful scrapes and legs, as if entreating it to flee.6
But men of such standing as Bassanio and
Benedick would never seek the base football-
players.7 It was a game in which tripping and

1 Merry Wives of Windsor, i. i. 155 ( = Broad shillings particularly
used in playing the game of shovel-board).

2 Ben Jonson, Every Man in His Humour, i. i.

3 2 Henry W., in. ii. 284. Justice Shallow was Sir Dagonet in
that society of fifty-eight citizens known as * The Fellowship of
Arthur.' 4 King Lear, i. iv. 87.

6 Troilus and Cressida, i. iii. 15. Cf. J. Taylor, Wit and Mirth,
Works, part ii. p. 193.

6 Cf. J. Taylor, Wit and Mirth. 7 King Lear, i. iv. 87.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 147

hacking were fine points of play, and the challenge
of yokels to one another at country sports would
often contain among other items the offer to ' trie
it out at football by the shinnes.' They could,
however, play in more fashionable company at
tennis, gleek, or primero.'1 They could, in
still higher circles, break a lance or practise tilts
and tournaments,2 or they might perform on the
viol-de-gamboys 3 at a mistress's feet, or amuse
themselves with the cithern in a barber's shop.
They would have Spanish jennets to ride4 and
coaches5 in which they might loll, flanked by
running footmen — three-suited knaves 6 who wore
the badge of service7 and trotted by the wheel.8
In quieter mood they might visit a friend and
indulge in the ' holly hearbe nicotion ' 9 as gallants
were wont. They would draw out of 'a little
hollow instrument of calcinated clay ' 10 the smoke
of that new-found herb, from the Isle of Nicosia,
wrapped up in rolls. The apothecary would have
infused it with some ' pestiferous juice,' 10 and the
smoke therefrom, each idle smoker would either

1 Henry PHI., i. iii. 30 ; Midsummer Nighfs Dream, HI. i. 1505
Henry VIIL, v. i. 7. Cf. Alchemist, v. iv.

2 i Henry VI., HI. ii. 515 <Tcwo Gentlemen of Verona, i. iii. 30.

3 Twelfth Night, I. iii. 26. 4 Othello, i. i. 113.

5 Merchant of Venice, in. iv. 82. 6 King Lear, n. ii. 16.
7 Henry V., iv. vii. 100. 8 Titus Andronicus, v. ii. 55.
9 Lyly, Woman in the Moon, in. i. Tobacco not mentioned by-
Shakespeare. 10 Daniel, Queens Arcadia.

148 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

convey out of his nose or ' down into his stomach
with a whiff.' They would discuss perhaps with
some non-smoking friends the merits and de-
merits of the c filthy roguish tobacco/ l while all the
time c it would do a man good to see the fume
come forth at their tonnels.' A travelled gallant
among them would have seen it grow in the
Indies, where Bobadil and a dozen more had
lived on the £ fumes of the simple ' l for twenty-
one weeks. He would praise it as an antidote to
the most deadly plant of Italy, and could speak,
though he were no c quack-salver/ of its virtues
in expelling ' rheums, raw humours, crudities and
obstructions/ x Another would explain that it
was received * in the courts of princes, the
chambers of nobles, the bowers of sweet ladies,
and the cabins of soldiers/ 2 and would dare his
fellows to malign so sweet an herb. Uncon-
vinced, the others would reply that the wicked
drug was good for nothing but to ' choke a man
and fill him full of smoke and embers.' l They
would know of four deaths in one house, of
recent date, caused by the herb ; and would
recollect, with one another's aid, that the cbell
went yesterday ' for two more such cases. They
might quote an instance where a man c had voided
a bushel of soot ' and would in the end advocate

1 Every Man in His Humour, HI. ii.

2 Chapman, Mons. D'Olive.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 149

whipping for the crime of smoking ; ' for in the
end it will stifle all, as many as use it.'

There were a few resorts at which people of all
ranks and occupations would meet occasionally.
There were the Paris Gardens in Southwark,1
whither one would cross by boat and listen now
to the waterman's cheery cry of Westward Ho !
at other times, to his magnificent abuse of a
brother-waterman who obstructed his way. In
the Gardens would be the old baboon ' drest up in
a coate of changeable cullers ' 2 and pursued * with
a couple of curs muzled/ a sight which elicited
yells of delight from the colliers and carters of
Southwark. To Shakespeare the ' angry ape which
played such fantastic tricks before high heaven '
as made angels weep, suggested sadder thoughts.
He saw in it a pitiful sight of

* Man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority.'3

There it was that Master Slender saw the
famous bear, Sackerson,4 encompassed with dogs,
stand and fight the course.5 An objectionable
place it was ! The very noise of the surround-
ings put Dekker in mind of hell ; ' the bear
showed fight like a black rugged soul that was
damned . . . the dogs like so many devils in-

1 Henry Fill., v. iii. 2. * Dekker, Workefor Armorours, pp. 97-8.

3 Measure for Measure, 11. ii. 117.

4 Merry Wives of Windsor, i. i. 287. 5 Macbeth, v. vii, 2.

150 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

flicting torments upon it ... but in the end they
commonly were crushed, and were either carried
away with ribs broken and skins torn (and hang-
ing about their ears), or else . . . they stood
whining and barking at their strong adversary
when they durst not bite him/ l There was the
Thames itself, where gallants in their barges would
row in state by the boats of city merchants and
their dames, and seek some safe retreat where they
could sing their catches and display their polished
wit before their honoured fair ones. Sometimes
carousals would be held on ships moored to the
bank before or after great events, as when Drake
singed the Spanish beard. And sometimes too
the Queen herself would gild the waters as she
glided in her royal barge from Richmond to
Whitehall amid a blaze of gaily attired courtiers
and silken nymphs, just like another Cleopatra.

Then there was the annual Bartholomew Fair
with its threadbare but nimble jugglers who
deceived the eye 2 and loosened the purse-strings ;
with its troops of fortune-tellers,3 ape-bearers,4
teeth-drawers5 and tumblers,6 not to mention the
gypsies playing their game of ' fast and loose '
and Bankes' famous dancing horse.7 At the

1 Dekker, Worke for Armorours, pp. 97-8.

2 Comedy of Errors, i. iii. 98. 3 Ibid.t v. i. 24.0.
4 Winter 's Tale, iv. ii. 96. 5 Lovis Labour V Lost, v. i. 611.
6 Ibid., in. i. 190. 7 Ibid., i. ii. 54.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 151

Fair, lords and ladies, citizens and 'prentices,
would all crowd round the pig-dressers' booths,1
call for c little tidy boar- pigs piping hot ! ' 2 and
would scarce be called away by the merriest of
brawls. Pedlars would be quarrelling over right
of station, cut-purses pursuing their busy trade,
Puritans canting of sin and error, and besotted
yeomen reeling here and there. However, none
of these resorts were known as well as ' Paul's ' : 3
* the great Exchange of all discourse, . . . the Synod
of all pates politicke, . . . the Theeves Sanctuary,4
the home of " vilJanous meetings, pernicious plots,
and black humours."'5 ' The noise in it was like
that of bees/ said a contemporary ; ' a strange
humming or buzz, mixed of walking, tongues,
and feet.' 4 Here the merchants would walk twice
a day, and with their ceaseless laughter imply that
they were sound.6 Coney-catchers looked about
for pigeons to pluck ; stale knights and captains out
of service, who lived upon mouldy stewed prunes
and dried cakes,7 would feel c Humphrey Hour ' j
glide past and * walk their dinner out ' 9 round

1 Cf. Jon son, Bartholomew fair.

2 Cf. 2 Henry 17., n. iv. 234. 3 Henry 17., i. ii. 52.

4 Earle, Microcosmography, p. 52 passim.

5 Middleton, Black Book (Works, vol. viii. p. 32).

6 Lupton, London and the Country Carbonadoed ', p. 275.

7 2 Henry 17., n. iv. 146.

8 Richard III, iv. i. 175.

9 City Match (Dodsley, ix. 335).

152 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

the good Duke's Tomb/ l while blush-coloured
doublets ranging down the ' Mediterranean He,' 2
the Insula Paulina, would brush against the grey
coats of cashiered mates in quest of a new master.3

* What plots are there laid to furnish young
gallants with ready money ! ' mused another
contemporary. < What swearing is there, yea,
what swaggering, what facing and out-facing !
What shuffling, what shouldering, what jeering,
what biting of thumbs to beget quarrels, what
holding up of fingers to remember drunken
meetings ! ' 4 Outside the building would be the
churchyard through which were approached the
bookbinders' shops. There would be gallants

* with big Italian look and Spanish face,' asking
for books in Spanish and Italian. They would
turn the books upside down, look at the titles,
wrinkle their brows, and with their nails score the
margins ' as though there were some notable
conceit.' Lastly, they would throw the books
away in a rage, swearing that they ' could never
find books of a true print.' 6

Amongst the motley crowd of idlers and busy-
bodies moving under the fretted vault of the

1 Those who had no means of procuring a dinner often loitered
about Duke Humphrey's monument at St. Paul's. Humphrey of
Gloucester was, contrary to general belief, really buried at St. Albans.

2 The middle aisle of Paul's is called the ' Mediterranean He,'
Dekker, GuWs Horn Book. 3 Ram Alley (Dodsley, x. 341).

4 Dekker, Dead Terme, pp. 49-51.

5 Return from Parnassus, Part II. n. iii. 3.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 153

cathedral, Shakespeare may well have discovered
his dashing Gratiano, his fantastic Lucio, his
humorous Nym and shapely Ned Poyns ; his
Grumio, his Parolles, and Pistol parading patches
on c cudgelled scars ' l begotten in Gallia wars.
Thence also the poet may have gathered many
features for the life-size portrait of the fat
knight himself, who might well have strolled
through the alleys of the cathedral after he had
caudled his morning taste ' to cure his overnight's
surfeit.1 2 In the wake of his huge spurs would,
perhaps, be following some common gamester,3
some deep conceited cut-purse or cheating bowler 4
or perhaps a devouring catchpole,5 for thieves did
foot by day as well as night.6

But it is more especially with contemporary
authors that we find such ' cogging caitiffs '
haunting the church and the exchange. Shake-
speare more often alludes to them in their more
familiar domains around the dice-box where

' Gourd and fullam holds,
And high and low beguile the rich and poor.' 7

All these ' cavaleroes about London ' 8 form, as
it were, a background to the monumental figure

1 Henry V., v. i. 90. 2 Timon of Athens, iv. iii. 226.

3 Airs mil that Ends Well, v. iii. 187.

4 Middleton, Black Book, p. 3 1 .

5 J. Taylor, A Nauy of Land Shippes, p. 91 ff.

6 Merry Wi<ves of Windsor, u. i. 122.

7 Ibid., i. iii. 94 (names of false dice).

8 2 Henry W., v. iii. 62.

154 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

of the stout knight ; they are the elements out
of which the great creation arose. And this is
true, whether FalstafF is taking his ease in his
inn, with its quaintly- named rooms,1 amid those
Corinthians 2 of his, mostly in the third degree 8 of
drink and amid his court . of drawers, tapsters,
ostlers, voyders, and under-skinkers ; 4 or whether
he is laying bare in thoughtful mood the philo-
sophy of honour. In any case, around his com-
fortable figure Shakespeare has sketched a picture
with background and foreground more widely
and accurately topical than we find elsewhere in
his whole gallery. His brother dramatists may
dwell rather more than he does on the actual
manners and customs of the time. But in those
tavern scenes where Prince Hal carouses with his
' sweet creature of bombast ' 5 Shakespeare is
supreme, not only in his own age, but in every age.
That c pottles of burnt sack with toast in it,' 6
with lime and sugar too,7 that flagons of Rhenish,8
stoups of claret,9 canakins of sherris,10 or Malmsey,11
and cups of Madeira 12 were quaffed by the guests

1 Cf. ' Bunch of Grapes' (Measure for Measure ; n. i. 128).
Dolphin chamber (2 Henry IV., n. i. 89). The Half Moon
(i Henry 17., n. iv. 30).

2 i Henry W., n. iv. 12. 3 Twelfth Night, i. v. 132.
4 i Henry IP., n. iv. 26. 6 Ibid., n. iv. 338.

6 Merry Wives of Windsor, II. i. 208 and in. v. 3.

7 i Henry 17., n. iv. 150. 8 Hamlet, v. i. 186.

9 2 Henry VL, iv. vi. 4. 10 2 Henry W.,\v. iii. in.

11 Love's Labour's Lost, v. ii. 233. 12 i Henry W., i. ii. 119.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 155

at Yaughan's 1 near the Globe, or by those at the
Boar's Head,2 the Elephant,3 the Porpentine,4
the Rose,5 the White Hart,6 the Pegasus,7 or the
Mermaid8 — all this we can gather from other
authors. For beer and wine were taken at every
meal, and, * if sack and sugar be a fault, God help
the wicked,' quoth Falstaff. But none of the several
dramatists whose scenes are laid in such ' ordi-
naries,' convey to us an adequate notion of those
small worlds behind the ivy-bush and red-lattice,9
where, outside, the picture of * we three ' 10 swayed
in the wind, and inside, on smirched worm-eaten
tapestries,11 Cain and Judas would bristle with
beards of the dissembling colour ;12 Hercules would
rest on his massy club,11 or the ' story of the
Prodigal, fresh and new,'13 and the German

1 Hamlet, v. i. 61. Cf. Ben Jonson, Every Man out of His
Humour, v. iv. j 'one Yohan.1 2 i Henry IV., n. iii.

8 Twelfth Night, in. iii. 4.9. 4 Comedy of Errors, in. i. 116.

6 Henry nil., i. ii. 152. 6 2 Henry 71., iv. viii. 25.

7 Return from Parnassus, Pt II.

8 Beaumont and Fletcher, Wit without Money, n. iv.

9 Merry Wives of Windsor, n. ii. 25.

10 Twelfth Night, n. iii. 17. A picture of two asses or fools, or
wooden heads, inscribed with one of the scrolls * We three * ' Nos
Sumus,"1 or * We three loggerheads be,' was a common device on
sign-boards. n Much Ado about Nothing, in. iii. 135.

12 Cf. Merry Wives of Windsor, i. iv. 23, and As You Like It, in.
iv. 8. In remembrance of the mystery plays, red and yellow hair
and beard were the recognised appendages of Judas and Cain re-
spectively in pictorial representations.

is Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. v. 8.

156 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

hunting in water-work * would speak out their
unheeded tales.

Other dramatists do not bring up so vividly
the sea-coal fires,2 the joint stools,3 the cosy
lower chairs,4 my ' bully- rook ' 5 the host, the
familiar tapster, the double-dealing customer, the
brawler ' most potent in potting/ Sneak's music 6
that fiddled to catches of Green Sleeves or Peg-
a-Ramsey, the Ancient blurting out in swagger-
ing vein rough scraps of Kyd and Peele ; 7 the
Corporal whose zeal burned in his nose ; 8 those
gay suppers with the buoyant ' bona roba ' 9 brim-
ming over alternately with love and oaths ; the
voyder clearing the table for cards or dice amid
the brawling of Proface! Preface!10 Reminiscences
of even the Steelyard, that famous German
hostelry in London, are associated with the mortal
Knight. It is there that the ' swag-bellied Hol-
lander ' n could find his homely Dutch dish half
stewed in grease ; 12 and perhaps the c swaggering
upspring'13 reeled at Hamlet's Danish Court
would unconsciously evoke memories of Teutonic
merry-making, the ' Hupfauf ' in which ' your

1 Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. v. 8, and 2 Henry IV., u. i. 148.

2 2 Henry W., n. i. 90. 3 Ibid., n. iv. 251 j folding-chairs.

4 Measure for Measure, n. i. 127.

5 Merry Wives of Windsor, n. i. 188.

G Cf. 2 Henry W., n. iv. 12 } =thc band. 7 Ibid., n. iv. 165.
* Ibid., n. iv. 335. 9 Ibid., in. ii. 24.

10 Ibid., v. iii. 30. n Othello, n. iii. 78.

12 Merry Wives of Windsor, in. v. 113. 1S Hamlet, i. iv. 9.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 157

German ' l would indulge at this same Hanseatic
Hall.

Many a company of * merry Greeks ' " and
c Ephesians of the old church ' 3 in those days
would end their revels with the bursting of glasses
—for * glasses, glasses, is the only drinking/ 4
and the three-hooped pot5 and covered goblet6
were then no longer in fashion. At many such
a gathering a boon companion would place his
weapon on the table, saying, ' God send me no
need of thee,' who, * by the operation of his second
cup/ would draw it on the drawer, when indeed
there was no need.7 And then would ensue one
of those nightly brawls, when lights would be
extinguished and swords unsheathed and Doll
Tearsheet would draw her knife and threaten to
thrust it into her neighbour's ' mouldy chops.*
But, after all, this is but one side of the picture.
Every ' red-lattice ' did not run with blood ; and
it is probably only to bring Falstaff and the royal
comrade of his bouts into stronger relief, that
this aspect of the inns and their management is
emphasised by Shakespeare. The desperate orgies
which cost Marlowe his life may have left, with
his young collaborator, tearful memories, but to

1 OtheUo, ii. iii. 77. 2 Middleton, A Mad World, i. ii.

3 2 Henry W., n. ii. 150. 4 Ibid., n. i. 146.

5 2 Henry VI.y iv. ii. 68. 6 As You Like It, HI. iv. 24.

7 Romeo and Juliet ', ill. i. 7.

158 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

drown this sorrow and redeem these scenes there
came those glorious nights at the c Mermaid '
when words were exchanged

4 So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whence they came,
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And then resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life.'1

Moreover, the excellent name for hospitality which
English inns even then bore, was widely known.
Such * ordinaries ' were cleanly and well managed,
and if they enclosed much rough humour, they
also fostered much sparkling wit. They were the
only rendezvous for ' the most ingenious, most
travailled, and most phantastic gallants. They
were the Exchange for newes out of all countries.
They were the only booksellers' shops. And
lastly, they were a school in which all were
fellows of one form.' 2

If many of the usual surroundings of the ale-
house are not touched upon, the picture which
Shakespeare gives us is yet a tolerably full one,
even to the ever-lurking sheriff and his ' blue-
bottle'3 following, who appeared on the scene when
the ' hue and cry'4 had followed certain individuals
unto Mistress Quickly 's house. Nowhere is the
poet's touch so happy as when he concerns him-

1 Beaumont writing to Jonson. 2 Dekker.

3 2 Henry W., v. iv. 24. 4 i Henry IF., n. iv. 519.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 159

self with such scenes. LanglancTs vivid ale-
house sketches — full of the most exquisite
humour, rough, simple, and direct, — leave in
their way little to be desired. But Shakespeare
advanced one step and more on Langland's
achievement. The dramatist's scenes of devilry
are just as broad and as naive as those of the
priest ; but in point of detail, in warmth of
colouring, and in sheer abandon there can be no
real comparison.

From the tavern-life of London to its seamy
side is no great leap. At times they overlap.
And both find a clear reflection in the dramatist's
pages. Many a scheming lawyer and criminal
doctor, many a butterfly gallant and soldiering
desperado would walk the way that led to New-
gate l and to such other compulsory resorts as
the Marshalsea 2 and the Fleet.3 Of such places
there were several in London, and each had
different wards for the accommodation of all.
There was a ' knight's ward ' 4 for the fallen
dignitaries, a ' twopenny ward ' 5 for the leaner
kind. Whippings were frequent, fees were paid
by the prisoners if Fortune ever liberated them,
while criminals were taken to execution at the
cart's tail, or dragged thither on a hurdle. These

1 i Henry IV., ill. iii. 95. 2 Henry VIII., v. iii. 85.

3 2 Henry IV., v. v. 92. 4 Marston, Eastward Hoe ! v. ii. 44.

* Ibid., 49.

160 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

were the places where only to be out of elbows
was in fashion, and where beggar and knight
railed on Fortune together.1 That much sad
humour hung over such places cannot but be
inferred from Shakespeare's descriptions ; for
scenes of pitiable plight are revealed again and
again, but always through a never-failing dia-
phanous veil of humour. Behind the prison
bars Master Rash,2 the heyday amoroso of a brief
hour, and Master Caper,3 in his frayed suit of
peach-coloured satin, both unable to pay the
gaoler's fees,4 would sigh and chafe amid the
oaths rapped out by Master Forthright the
tilter,6 together with Masters Copperspur, Deep-
vow, and Starve-lackey,6 ' men of long rapiers and
breeches ' 7 all. c Young Drop-heir that killed
lusty Pudding/ 8 and * wild Half-can that stabbed
Pots/ would, no doubt, be singing their swagger-
ing snatches ; while all alike would spend some
part of their day begging at the grated windows,
and appealing to the passers-by with their whining
'For the Lord's sake.'9 At times 'the fatal
bellman'10 would bring the bitterness of death
before them as he rang his handbell in front of

1 Earle, Microcosmography, p. 58.

2 Measure for Measure, iv. iii. 5. 3 Ibid., 9.

4 Winter's Tale, i. ii. 53. 8 Measure for Measure, iv. iii. 17.
6 Ibid., 14. 7 Earle, Microcosmography, p. 52.

8 Measure for Measure, iv. iii. 15. 9 Ibid., 19.

10 Macbeth, n. ii. 3.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 161

the condemned cell, and exhorted the prisoner
to repentance — an office which a pious Merchant
Taylor had recently endowed. It is not without
significance, however, that Shakespeare, in describ-
ing the inside of a prison, represents, out of four
prisoners mentioned, four convicted for stabbing.
This form of violence, towards the end of Eliza-
beth's reign, became more common than pleasant,
and in the first year of her successor's reign
a Statute of Stabbing was passed. But the
wretches, thus ' fettered in base durance and con-
tagious prison/ kept without food and tor-
mented, were not of one pattern. Misfortune
had placed some where crime had led the
others. And the insolvent debtor,1 deprived of
his liberty, and the poor prisoner carried off
by a cruel fever,2 would evoke in Shake-
speare a more pitying sentiment than did those
whose sentence was the strappado,8 the rack,4 or
the cart5 that toiled up Holborn Hill6 to the
Thief's Gallows,7 or to the Murderer's Gibbet8 at
Tyburn ; 9 while the memory of former religious

1 Cf. Cymbeline, in. iii. 34.

2 Measure for Measure, iv. iii. 70. Gaol fever, which raged
throughout the prisons until the reign of George in.

3 i Henry W., n. iv. 247. * Measure for Measure, v. i. 313.

5 i Henry W., n. iv. 546.

6 Lupton, London and the Country Carbonadoed, p. 12.

7 As You Like It, HI. ii. 325. 8 Macbeth, iv. i. 66.
9 Love's Labour -V Lost, iv. iii. 51.

L

1-62 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

persecutions, which had dragged many a victim
to the stake, drew from him the scathing

lines : —

' It is an heretic that makes the fire,
Not she that burns in Jt.' l

Leaving these fever-stricken haunts, where
honest hearts were daily broken, and vice was
duly punished, we find yet a few more shades
of sordid London life reflected in the works of
the great bard. In a sickly death-march of
metaphor and comparison, there wander across
the stage the whole army of the lost and friend-
less in London : the blind man who strikes
round him and beats the post, when 'twas the
boy that stole his meat ; 2 the beggar woman who
steals children ; 3 the beggars married under a
bush 4 with a rush on their forefingers ; 5 the
foolish beggars

4 Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame,
That many have, and others must sit there ' ; 6

the punks, the death's-heads 7 or procuresses ; and
lastly, the Bedlamites. These last, with their
faces grimed with filth, with blankets upon their
loins, their hair all elfed in knots, step into the

1 Winter's Tale, n. iii. 115. 2 Much Ado about Nothing, II. i. 195.
3 2 Henry PL, iv. ii. 145. 4 As You Like It, in. iii. 82.

6 All V Well that Ends Well, n. ii. 23.

6 Richard II., v. v. 25.

7 i Henry 17., HI. iii. 35. So called from the ring with a
memento mori on it worn by these women.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 163

foreground of the canvas when Edgar assumes
the role of 'poor Tom.1 All their canting invoca-
tions, their erratic babblings and gestures are
employed, though, leavened by the very fact of
the disguise, they are not without a touch of the
glamour that poetry always gives.

To one section of the unfortunate, however,
Shakespeare's unbounded pity went out. Those
' indigent faint souls, past corporal toil,' l those
suffering, honest paupers in the almshouse2 and
the Spital,3

' Who twice a day their wither'd hands hold up
Towards Heaven,' 4

praying God to * save the foundation,' 6 were
tearfully touched by the great dramatist ; and the
sighing jest of forlorn, wandering Imogen seems
to breathe the poet's serious wish that those
havens of refuge for toil-worn souls might never
' fly the wretched.' 6 And who does not recall
in this connection the bent figure of a brave old
warrior, who was, later on, to utter his ' adsum '
for the last time within one such God-sent
shelter?

The ineffectual efforts to suppress ' ingenious,

1 Henry 7., I. i. 17. 2 Ibid., 16.

3 Timon of Athens, iv. iii. 39. 4 Henry 7., iv. i. 316.

5 Much Ado about Nothing, v. i. 324. Some commentators take
these words to be the formula of thanksgiving uttered by those
who received alms at religious houses.

6 Cymbeline, in. vi. 7.;

164 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

foolish, rascally knaves ' x — such vagabonds as
Abram men, dummerars, counterfeit cranks,2 and
the like — by shackling their heels in the stocks,3
or by castigating them at the high-cross,4 do
not escape the poet's gentle smile. For rogues
could evade the famished correctioner,5 and the
unlettered scoffer in the play exclaims, c If all
your beggars were whipped, I would wish no
better office than to be a beadle.' 6

Of those ' blue-bottle rogues/ 7 the beadles,
whose business it was to track rascals and whip
beggars, there is much rich satire in the drama-
tists, as also of their brother officers, the Watch.
The well-meant attempts at citizen government
lent themselves easily to burlesque from their
ponderous assumption and their futile results.
The town-crier,8 the whiffler,9 who cleared the
way for processions,9 the sexton, who whipped
out the dogs, and the bellman 10 as well, went clad
in the dignity befitting such limbs of the law ;
and they find in consequence a fitting place
in Shakespeare's metaphors and similes. When

1 All's Well that Ends Well, v. ii. 25.

2 Dekker, Bellman of London. Madmen of the type of Tom o'
Bedlam, feigned mutes, and men who pretended to have * the falling
sickness ' — epileptic fits.

3 Ibid., p. 89. 4 Taming of the Shrew, i. i. 132.

6 2 Henry IV., v. iv. 23. 6 Pericles, u. i. 92.

7 2 Henry W., v. iv. 22. 8 Hamlet, in. ii. 4.
9 Henry 7., Prol. 12. 10 Macbeth, n. ii. 3.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 165

Dogberry's companion gives instructions to the
Watch to silence crying babies, Shakespeare is
laughing at that Statute of the Streets, 1595,*
which forbade a man to whistle after the hour
of nine, or ' any artificer making great sound '
to work after that time. It also forbade sudden
outcries of any kind in the night, whether they
arose from c affrays, or the beating of wives or
servants, or singing, or revelling.' But backed
up as it was by an antiquated and timid Watch,
the statute was but little enforced, and the breach
of the statute added a glow and an excitement
to neighbourly life which previously had not been
altogether wanting. ' Quiet hurly-burlies ' 2 would
continue to be fought, and fought for hours,
amongst those, of whom not one was c so imperti-
nent as to ask the reason why.' For the Watch
would be f drawing in diligent ale, and singing
catches,' 3 and Master Constable would be c con-
triving the toast,' 3 while danger was threatening
the city's peace. When brawls would arise, the
citizens themselves took the law into their own
hands. They kept their weapons in readiness, as
did the apprentices, and at the cry for ' bats and
clubs/ 4 they would follow the scent, and lay about
them to overawe the combatants, despite head-

1 Cf. Much Ado about Nothing, HI. in. 64. See also p. 87.

2 Love's Pilgrimage. 3 Beaumont and Fletcher, Coxcomb, n. iii.
4 Cf. Coriolanus, i. i. 161 j and Romeo and Juliet, I. i. 80.

1 66 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

borough1 or tharborough,2 or any such officer.
Shrove Tuesday was the day on which appren-
tices were specially busy. They made it their
business to storm places of evil repute ; the law
would limp behind, but it was not uncommon
to hang a ' pewterer's prentice on a Shrove
Tuesday's riot.'3

The Watch were not discerning in their judg-
ments. They would put the wrong man in the
stocks, and depart their ways with mutual in-
junctions to remember their respective duties, and
' go sleep in the fear of God.' 4 They were
charged to ' comprehend all vagrom men,1 and
' to bid any man stand, in the prince's name.' 5 If
he refused to stand, they had this consolation—-
they were * rid of a knave.' 6 They were to make
no noise in the streets, but sleeping would not
offend ; they were only to have a care lest their
bills were stolen. If they met a thief, they were
to suspect him, but to let him show his true
character by stealing out of their company ;
'twere best so, for peace sake. There can be
no wonder that c boxing the Watch ' was long
after a midnight amusement for gallant blood,
and that the contemporary young gentleman
fleshed his sword in merry moments on these

1 Beaumont and Fletcher, Faithful Friends, I. ii.

2 Loves Labour "s Lost, i. i. 183. 3 Jonson, Silent Woman, i. i.
4 Marston, Dutch Courtesan.

6 Much Ado about Nothing, in. iii. 25. Q Ibid., 30 ff.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 167

sleepy guardians of the public safety. The magis-
trates were oftentimes scarcely more intelligent,
and the logic of the bench is reflected in more
than one place. * Peace, varlet, dost chop with
me ? ' exclaimed one incompetent magistrate to
an innocent man brought before him. ' I say it
is imagined thou hast murdered Lysander. How
it will be proved I know not. Thou shalt there-
fore presently be led to execution.'1

Leaving now some of the manifold phenomena
of London life, as they appear reflected in dramatic
creations, we have to look out for a similar
treatment of the contemporary professional life,
together with the trades and humbler occupations.

It is clear from the first, that Shakespeare's
sympathies lay almost entirely with those who
followed professions rather than trades. Phy-
sicians and surgeons, lawyers, schoolmasters
and soldiers, all had some attraction for him,
and they are treated in his pages with the
respect that befitted their respective callings. To
the many toilers, however, his attitude was differ-
ent. Their roughness and uncouthness had for
him the virtue of humour, but the necessity which
compelled them to be ' garlic-eaters ' and to wear
' greasy aprons,' seems to have set up an effectual
barrier of reserve between them and him.2

1 Chapman, Widow's Tears.

2 Leo, Shakespeare Das Volk und die Narren (Shak. Jahrbuch, vol.
xv. 1880).

1 68 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

With regard to medical matters, he exhibits a
wide acquaintance, but the methods of treatment
he occasionally reflects would probably have flat-
tered the age, as for instance in the music
prescribed to soothe the ' untuned and jarring
senses ' of that ' child-changed father,' Lear.
For the remedies of contemporary medicoes
savoured all of Galen's prescriptions, which were
but £ empiricutic.' x It seems indeed as if ' the
spells and medicines bought of mountebanks ' '
did not greatly differ from the drugs of the
master doctors of the day. Balsamum,3 aqua-
vitae,4 bitter pills5 of coloquintida,6 or rhubarb,7
eisel8 (or vinegar) against strong infection, in-
fusions that dwelt in ' vegetives ' 9 which had
4 won their virtue under the moon/ and 'many
simples operative ' whose power would close the
eye of anguish,10 all formed part of the average
pharmacopoeia. For aching bones11 there would be
cataplasms ; patches would be used for cudgelled
scars ; 12 plaster and salve for aching soles,13 and
plaintain leaves14 for broken shins. c Rose-cheeked
youth' was often brought down to the fasting-

I Cf. Coriolanus, 11. z. 122. 2 Othello, I. iii. 62.
3 Comedy of Errors, iv. i. 89. 4 Ibid.

6 Two Gentlemen of Verona, H. iv. 147. 6 Othello, i. iii. 350.

7 Macbeth, v. iii. 55. 8 Sonnets, cxi. 10.
9 Pericles, in. ii. 36. 10 King Lear, iv. iv. 14.

II Romeo and Juliet, n. v. 65. 12 Henry P., n. ii. 116.

13 King John, v. ii. 13. 14 Romeo and Juliet , i. ii. 52.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 169

diet * by the barber-surgeon, who also might
discipline his patients in tubs * heated smoking
hot.'2 Diseases in the body and fever in the
blood were cured by incision3 or leeches.4 But
all seasons were not favourable, and medical al-
manacs would infallibly name the right months
for bleeding.5 The quacks were often but thieves
in disguise. When ' the highways grew thin
with travellers' they would settle at inns and
cozen the guileless while talking of cures.

Master Doctor Caius was possibly an overdrawn
portrait of the ' renowned French physician ' 6 of
the day. The original may have been Elizabeth's
medical adviser, Dr. Julio, or Dr. Mayerne-
Turquet ; for the latter was a well-known
professor of medicine whose long flowing periwig
and black velvet Parisian pourpoint became asso-
ciated in English minds with a foreign doctor.
An apothecary would often be one cin tattered
weeds with overwhelming brows.' 7 His c needy
shop ' would be stocked with such things as tor-
toises, stuffed alligators and fish of various
kinds, while his shelves would hold ' a beggarly
account of empty boxes,' earthen pots, and musty

1 'Timon of Athens, iv. in. 87.

2 Beaumont and Fletcher, Knight of the Burning Pestle.

3 Laves Labour V Lost, iv. iii. 95.

4 Antony and Cleopatra, v. i. 36. 5 Cf. Richard II., I. i. 157.

6 Merry Wives of Windsor, in. i. 61.

7 Romeo and Juliet, v. i. 40 ff.

170 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

seeds, remnants of pack-threads and old cakes
of roses — all ' thinly scattered to make up a show/

Many common complaints were named then as
now; but the 'web and pin'1 was an ailment of the
eye, hysteria was best known as ' mother/ 2 while
nervous complaints were vaguely attributed to the
wilful ways of Nimble spirits in the arteries.'3
Experiments on living animals were not unknown
at that day. When the Queen in Cymbeline
would try her drugs, she suggests ' such creatures
as we count not worth the hanging ' 4 for the ex-
periment ; and the physician's caution to her, that
from the practice she would but make hard * her
heart, probably represented more than a solitary
opinion on the still-vexed question of vivisection.

The lawyer, in the next place, was a familiar
figure in Elizabethan life, with his quiddities and
his quillets, his cases, his tenures and his tricks ; 5
and the attorney who clutched ten groats as his
fee,6 the notary with his inkhorn,7 the judge,
and jury who ' may in the sworn twelve have a
thief or two guiltier than him they try,'8 the
bailiff or nuthook,9 the crowner,10 and scrivener,11

1 King Lear, in. iv. 118. 2 Ibid., n. iv. 56.

3 Love's Labour V Lost, iv. iii. 303. 4 Cymbeline, i. vi. 20.

5 Hamlet, v. i. 107 ff. 6 All's Well that Ends Well, ii. ii. 21.

7 Merchant of Venice, i. iii. 145.

8 Measure for Measure, u. i. 20.

9 Winter's Tale, iv. ii. 97 j also 2 Henry IV., v. iv. 8.

10 Hamlet, v. i. 24. n Taming of the Shrew, iv. iv. 59.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 171

all represent that section of the Elizabethan world
to which, more than to any other, Shakespeare owed
a number of figurative details. Frequent are the
allusions made to the profession ; and those made to
its deeds and scripts, its covenants 1 and tenements,2
actions of battery 8 and actions of slander,4 fines,
recoveries,5 and contempt of court,6 fee-simple 7 and
fee-farm,8 customary rights,9 bonds,10 manual- seal n
and recognizances,12 are a few samples gathered
indifferently from an exuberance of technicality,
and witness to a detailed knowledge which would
have done no discredit to one with a legal training.

As a sign of legal dignity the sheriff" would
have a stout post 13 erected before his door, upon
which proclamations would be set up, to be read
by the people bareheaded There would be civic
gatherings which he would adorn, and when he,
no doubt, would feel the importance and dignity
of his office.

Nor was a lawyer's life made up solely of dry-
as-dust days. In the vacation he would be
notoriously idle, and leave what little work there
was to his man, who, like Master Woolfe, would

1 Hamlet, i. i. 94. 2 Henry fill., in. ii. 343.

3 Measure for Measure, n. i. 177. * Ibid., 179.

5 Comedy of Errors, n. ii. 75. 6 Winter's Tale, iv. iii. 740.

7 All's Well that Ends Well, iv. iii. 275.

8 Troilus and Cressida, in. ii. 50. 9 Richard II., n. i. 196.
10 Timon of Athens, u. i. 34. u Richard II., iv. i. 25.

12 Hamlet, v. i. 108. 13 Twelfth Night, i. v. 147.

172 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

hold that c theirs was the best religion ' who paid
their fees best ; the consciences of such were never
examined. The more settled of the lawyers
would sleep between term and term, and dream
of their days at Clement's Inn, when a clique
of swashbucklers did what they liked, and ' did
it soundly too.' At other Inns of Court as well,
it was a roystering life that the students led,
and many of them spent years in the lawyer's
Bohemia, before they could settle as citizens doing
their duty by Church and State.1

The information collected from the dramatic
writings with regard to the teachers of the day
and their methods, is also by no means insig-
nificant. Of the renowned erudites and masters
who played a conspicuous part in this era of
Humanities and new-born Science, no reminiscence
is found, though perhaps there is some hint of
the movement generally in Shakespeare's Love's
Labour 'j Lost. Their dogmatic ways are perhaps
aimed at in a careless manner when he throws
his darts at the ' little Academe,' 2 where the King
and his fellow-scholars endeavoured to consort
in c leaden contemplation.' 3 The ushering parson,
Sir Hugh Evans of Windsor, has been identified

1 Cf. Jonson, Earthokmenu Fair, Induction.

2 Love's Labour "s Lost, I. i. 13. Perhaps Shakespeare was also
aiming at the Earl of Northumberland's * Philosophical Academy,
plainly enough satirised by Lodge and Greene.

3 Ibid., iv. iii. 318.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 173

with a distinct personality, as was explained in the
preceding chapter,1 but he was, no doubt, in some
degree representative of the lowlier kind of tutor
of that day^ There were also braggart peda-
gogues who, like Holofernes, had * been at a great
feast of language and stolen the scraps ' : 2 pedants
that kept school in the church,3 or in the room
over the church-porch ; also ladies' schoolmasters
1 well seen in music.' 4 These are the types of
this honourable profession upon which the dramatic
fancy mainly rested.

The boy who attended the grammar-school of
the time would have much to do with the Usher,
who was himself but ' a great schoolboy, with a
little beard and black clothes.' 5 Such a one would
know better ' how to whip a scholar than to
learn him, for if he had been fit for anything in
the University he had not left her so soon.1
Education implied tears then. It was often more
stern than effective. ' For whereas they make one
scholar, they mar ten/ said a contemporary ; 6 and
one country pedagogue would whip his boys on
a cold winter's morning * to get himself into a
heat.'

With all these burrs of trial and tribulation
clinging thickly to him, the whining schoolboy

1 See p. 75. 2 Love's Labour 'V Lost, v. i. 37.

3 Twelfth Night, in. ii. 81. 4 Taming of the Shrew, i. ii. 133.
5 Lupton, London and the Countrv Carbonadoed. 6 Peacham.

i74 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

would first learn to answer the ' absey book,' l
to read from the ' horn-book,1 2 and write from the
texts in the copy-books 3 set before him. After
this, Robert Recorde's Arithmetic* persuasively
called The Whetstone of the Wit^ would make
him a man of figures, while Lilly's Accidence 5 would
initiate him into the mysteries of the cases, the
numbers and genders.6 Later on, the ' sententiae
pueriles,' beloved of Sir Nathaniel, would teach
him the grammar of Latin : after which j^Esop
would be put before him, with his ' currish
riddles/7 then Tully's Orator? Ovidius Naso's
flowers of fancy,9 and the medieval poetry of
c good old Mantuan.' 10

After these had refined him he would be set
grappling with the verses of Horace,11 and perhaps
selections from Seneca and the Latin dramatists 12
would complete his discomfiture. Such would be
the schoolboy's course ; and such the books that
filled his satchel, weighed on his soul and damped
his shining morning face. Small wonder that
the unlettered Elizabethan viewed such courses

1 King John, I. i. 196.

2 Love's Labour V Lost, v. i. 49. 3 Ibid., v. ii. 42.

4 Cf. a paper by Spencer Baynes, * What Shakespeare learnt at
School,' based on educational pamphlets of the seventeenth century.

6 Cf. Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. i. 16. 6 Ibid.) iv. i. 70.

7 3 Henry VI., v. v. 26. 8 Titus Andronicus, iv. i. 14.

9 Love's Labour's Lost, iv. ii. 120.

10 Ibid., iv. ii. 92. u Ibid., iv. ii. 99.
12 Hamlet, u. ii. 407.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 175

askance, or that the erection of a grammar-school
to such was nothing short of a ' traitorous cor-
ruption of youth ! ' 1

Of the more regal seats of learning — the
Universities — and of their alumni^ much can be
gathered from the dramatists.

The Oxford colleges were ' richly seated near
the river-side,' the town * gorgeous with high-built
colleges ' : —

' And scholars seemly in their grave attire
Learned in searching principles of art.'2

But though * lordly ' were the dwellings, * spacious
the rooms, and full of pleasant walks,' the
doctors were but ' meanly learned,' 2 and not in
keeping with such a fount of learning. At
Cambridge, * merry (but abusive) comedies ' were
frequently acted within College walls, until James i.
forbade such ' publick shews ' within five miles of
the University. The average undergraduate at
the end of his career would be able to say that he
had matriculated in the University, worn out six
gowns there, seen some fools and some scholars,
that he had gone bareheaded over the quadrangle,
eaten his ' commons with a good stomach,' and
' done many sleights and tricks to maintain his
wits in use.' 3 In ' statu pupillari ' he would have

1 Cf. z Henry 71., iv. vii. 33. This was Jack Cade's comment
on the educational facilities. It is an indictment, however, of no
widespread application.

2 Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. 3 'The Puritan, I. ii.

1 76 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

been subject to whipping, but as a graduate
he would be able to laugh soundly at the idea.1
He would have many a recollection of indis-
position after ' whiffing tobacco and drinking
healths,' 2 on which occasions he had ' been en-
ticed out to take the air/ He would have
swum at ' freshmans heat, at paradise, in Barne-
well poole, at Chery hinton, Hogmagog hills,
and at Batts ffolie/ 3 In his vacations he would
have been often pointed to as a member of the
University, for, like young Easy, he would have
worn University manners in the country ; and,
in wishing c Good-morning/ would have saluted
with ' Vim, vitam, spemque, salutem ! '

The * meere scholler ' at the University was an

* animall scabiosum/ 3 He was a creature that could

* strike fire in the morning at his tinder-box, put on
a paire of lined slippers, sit rewming until dinner,
and then goe to his meate when the Bell rang/ He
would be one that had 'a peculiar gift in a cough
and a licence to spit/ He would be one that could
not { make a good legge ' nor ' eat a messe of broth
cleanly/ one that could not * ride a horse without
spur-galling/ nor 'salute a woman/ 3 He would be
the man for whom the College provided, just as
' Fortune provides for all mortality's ruins, your hos-

1 Cf. Middleton, Chaste Maid in Cheapside, in. ii.

2 Day, Peregrinatio Scholastica (Tractate xx.).

3 Return from Parnassus (Part II.), n. vi.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 177

pital for your lame-creeping soldier, your open
house for your beggar, and your widow for your
gentleman/1

He would ever raise his hands in wonder at
those 'amorettoes' who spent their time in
1 combing of their tangled hair,' and would
renounce the fairer sex, not having been trained
to women's company — a want in University
education, allowed by contemporaries to be c the
spoil of youth/ * While away from his College
he would be pointed to as ' piping hot from the
University/ for 'he smells of buttered loaves
yet ' ; he would be allowed to be perhaps ' an
excellent scholar but the arrantest ass/ 2

Of war and of c hairbreadth 'scapes i* the im-
minent deadly breach' there are many pictures
in the dramatists ; but they are generally drawn
with a free hand, and the details, though accu-
rate, can scarcely always be described as strictly
Elizabethan. Their armies contained ancients,
corporals, lieutenants,3 master-gunners,4 espials,*
and discoverers.6 Their weapons might be curtle-
axes,7 brown bills,8 or steel-pikes.9 They might
use brass cannon,10 culverins,11 mortar-pieces,12 or

1 Middleton, Chaste Maid in Cheapside, 1. ii., in. ii.

2 Middleton, Tour Five Gallants, n. i. 3 i Henry IP., iv. ii. 26.
4 i Henry VI., i. iv. 6. 6 Ibid., iv. iii. 6.

6 2 Henry 17., iv. i. 3. r As You Like It, \. iii. 115.

8 2 Henry VI., I v. x. 1 3. 9 Henry V., i v. i. 40. l° Ibid., m. i. 1 1 .
11 i Henry W., n. iii. 53. ™ Henry nil, v. iii. 45.

M

1 78 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

calivers,1 as well as smoky muskets,2 petars,3
and villainous saltpetre.4 The men-at-arms would
be 'lapped in proof'5 with clibbard's head on
knee/6 They would wear scaly gauntlets7 and
cuisses,8 beavers9 and bucklers,10 breastplates11
and burgonets,12 vantbraces13 and riveted armour.14
To the sound of the shrill trump, the ' spirit-
stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife/ 15 would
they follow their leader and chis banners sable,
trimmed with rich expense/16 It was long after
Elizabeth's reign that a radical change took place
in the accoutrement of English armies, notably
in the days of Marlborough, so that although
some of the martial detail mentioned was already
obsolete, yet in general ' the plumed troops and
the big wars ' were drawn from contemporary
models. The kerns and gallowglasses,17 who fought
with rebellious Macdonald against Macbeth, would
call up to an Elizabethan audience those troops

1 i Henry IV., iv. ii. 19.

2 All's Well that Ends WeU, in. ii. in.

3 Hamlet^ in. iv. 207. 4 i Henry IV., i. iii. 60.

5 Macbeth^ I. ii. 54.

6 Love's Labour^s Lost, v. ii. 54.5. 7 2 Henry IV., i. i. 146.

8 i Henry IV., iv. i. 105.

9 2 Henry IV., iv. i. 120.

10 Much Ado about Nothing, v. ii. 17.

11 Cf. 2 Henry VI., in. ii. 232. 12 Ibid., v. i. 204.
13 Troilus and Cressida, I. iii. 296. 14 Ibid., v. vi. 29.

15 Othello, ill. iii. 353. 16 Pericles, v. Prol. 19.

17 Macbeth, l. ii. 13.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 179

which followed the wild O'Neile from the Western
Isle to London, and caused such excitement in the
metropolis.

The extensive use of pressgangs and the mal-
versations of press-money,1 which prevailed during
the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, find their
replica in the scenes in which Falstaff, on royal
service, has ragged Thomas Wart pricked down
on the roll together with Francis Feeble, Ralph
Mouldy, and Simon Shadow,2 whilst he sees in
his mind's eye a number of other ' shadows to
fill up the muster-book/ 3 In an ordinary way,
an officer thus commissioned would press good
yeomen's sons, c contracted bachelors, who would
as lieve hear the devil as a drum.' Such would
buy themselves off from service, and in the ranks
would be left none but * discarded, unjust serving-
men,' c younger sons to younger brothers, re-
volted tapsters, and ostlers trade - fallen, the
cankers of a calm world and a long peace/ Doubt-
less, too, some would enlist and try to forget their
past disgrace when they were drummed out of
their old regiments by John Drum's entertain-
ment.4 And so the rabble rout would come

1 King Lear, iv. vi. 87.

2 Bogus names entered on the list by the recruiting officer, and for
which pay was drawn by him.

3 z Henry IV. , in. ii. 135.

* Cf. All's Well that Ends Well, in. vi. 38, and J. Taylor, Laugh
and be Fat, fol. ii. 78.

i8o SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

together, and as they marched, would ' find linen
enough on every hedge.'

The professional soldier would have a fitting
notion of the dignity of his calling. He
would be ' full of strange oaths, . . . jealous in
honour/ and * sudden and quick in quarrel.' * A
gentleman and a soldier would never c change
words' with those who had cnot so much as a
good phrase in their bellies';2 barely would he
touch them with his sword. Among his equals,
however, he would ever have a ' trick or two to
kill.'2 The counterfeit man of war would deny
any ' rare and un-in-one-breath-utterable skill ' in
the stoccata and passada, but might own to some
rudiments in the science, announcing the same in
a tone of haughty significance. His dreams
would be of ' breaches, ambuscades, Spanish
blades, and healths five fathom deep.' He was one
who would rather * die with silence than live with
shame,' 3 but on occasion could talk of beleaguer-
ings, where 'resolute gentlemen as any were in
Europe' were struck down in the breach, and
how he had escaped, with such resolution had he
advanced. He would have at his command tales of
wars in ' Bohemia, Hungary, Dalmatia, Poland, and
where not ' ; of services of his by land and by sea

1 As You Like It, n. vii. 1 50.

2 Cf. Ben Jonsorf s ' Bobadil,' Every Man in His Humour, i. i.

3 Ben Jonson, Every Man in His Humour , i. ii.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 181

under the best commanders in Christendom. He
would narrate how he was ' twice shot at the
taking of Aleppo, once at the relief of Vienna ' : l
how he had been ca gentleman-slave in the
gallies,' and had escaped badly maimed, with
nothing but his scars, to which he would point
as c the noted marks of his resolution.' l He would
also be a mine of military knowledge ; and in
fighting his battles over again he would instruct
his hearers how to fortify their men ' with the
quinque-angle formation in champion ground,
because the corners there would fall flat/ Such
would be the military figures of Elizabethan
times : some, impostors, but also some whom
no sea could deter nor enterprise daunt.

In addition to the professions already touched
upon — the more regular professions — there were
other channels into which the energies of England's
best sons were directed, and in which many of
them found fame. None of these was more popular
or more honourable than that of Adventurer, em-
bodying, as it did, the united glory of soldier and
sailor, and often the profit of a merchant. Indeed,
these adventurers were oftentimes but merchants
of enterprise, and their original motive is still
visible in the title of ' Merchant Adventurers.'
Those hardy sailors who rounded the Horn and
burst on the Pacific, represented a class of rest-

1 Ben Jonson, E<very Man in His Humour ', I. ii.

1 82 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

less spirits to whom modern England owes the
foundation of her colonial wealth, while to their
age they gave a never-failing supply of wonders.
These would be the men who would set out
as merchants c venturing madly on desperate
marts ' : —

' Some, to the wars, to try their fortunes there,
Some, to discover islands far away.' l

Before venturing forth many of them would,
as was the custom, insure their safe return.2
Puntarvolo, by laying out ^5000, would receive
five times as much on his return from the Turk's
Court at Constantinople.2 So each c putter-out of
five for one ' would start with a light heart, and
drift his ways, whether his path lay through the
bottomless bay of Portugal,3 the roughness of the
swelling Adriatic,4 or across those frozen ridges
of the Alps 5 to drug-damned Italy 6— * the Alps
which spat and voided their rheum upon those
low-seated vassals, the valleys/ Some would
brave a Poland winter,7 or go and dwell with < the
swag-bellied Hollander ' ; 8 while others would
seek the perfumes of Arabia,9 or visit the land

1 Two Gentlemen of Verona, i.iii. 10.

2 Cf. Tempest, in. iii. 48 ; cf. also Every Man out of His Humour.

3 As You Like It, iv. i. 206. 4 'Taming of the Shrew, i. ii. 74.
5 Richard II., i. i. 64. 6 Cymbeline, in. iv. 15.

7 Comedy of Errors, in. ii. xoo. 8 Othello, 11. iii. 80.
9 Macbeth, v. i. 57.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 183

of Prester John.1 If they went west, they went
for conquest and colonisation ; and no tale was
too strange if only it had crossed the high seas.
They would bring home as trophies Indians and
monsters.2 They would be able to tell of un-
inhabited islands ; ' strangely-named deities ' like
Setebos ; wonder-workers like Sycorax ; races,
savage and mysterious, composed of men ' whose
heads stood in their breast.' The colonial gold-
fever was then in the early stages of its develop-
ment. ' Gold is more plentiful there/ an en-
thusiast would say, ' than copper is with us. All
their dripping-pans are pure gold ; all the chains
with which they chain up their streets are massy
gold ; and for rubies and diamonds they go forth
on holidays and gather 'em by the seashore to
hang on their children's coats and stick in their
children's caps.' 3 Then would be formed small
colonies, like that of Virginia, which was peopled
by * a few industrious Scots, who indeed are dis-
persed over the face of the whole earth.' 4 They
would give people at home an opportunity of rais-
ing questions of the ethical relation to be observed
between the invader and native, and would leave
the same authorities to deal with the social institu-
tions and government of such communities. The
savage might say to them, ' You taught me lan-

1 Much Ado about Nothing, n. i. 262. 2 Tempest, n. ii. 34 ff.

3 Eastward Hoe. * Seagull's description of Virginia.

1 84 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

guage ; and my profit on 't is, I know how to
curse/ But such problems would be too hard for
the adventurer himself. The men at home would
fashion their commonwealths and weave their
Utopias. The adventurers would be England's
official pirates as far as Spanish treasure-ships were
concerned ; but to meaner and unofficial pirates
the law would show no mercy. Such offenders
would be hung on the shore at low-water mark,
and lie drowning till three tides had washed over
them.1 Matters of foreign travel and adventure,
then, were household topics in the days of Eliza-
beth, and the adventurers themselves were most
valuable assets of the country which had pro-
duced them. Scarcely professional men, and yet
not tradesmen, were the projectors, the usurers,
and newsvenders of the day. Then as now, many
were the lines of life taken in the hope that
they would point the royal roads to fortune.
Some, like Fitzdottrel, would long to become
' Duke of Drownlands ' 2 by joining in a scheme
for draining the marshes of England ; others
would float schemes for making large sums by
new ways of ' dressing dogskins/ or of c bottling
ale ' ; while others would undertake to find a way
of ' serving the whole state with toothpicks/
The usurers, with their gold chains about their
necks, would drain poor men with their system of

1 Tempest, I. i. 61. 2 Ben Jonson, Devil is an Ass, ii. i.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 185

commodities. They would increase their profits
by making loans, partly in such useless com-
modities as c brown paper and old ginger.' For
such a loan was Master Rash imprisoned ; * and it
was this iniquitous system which Bacon proposed
to legislate against in 1623.

It is Jonson who throws light on the wholesale
knavery which existed among the newsvenders
of the time.2 News was gathered from four main
centres in London : the Court, Paul's, the Ex-
change, and Westminster Hall. There would be
barbers' news, tailors' news, c authentical news,'
and apocryphal news. Wonderful strange news
from Amsterdam and Libtzig would be much
valued, and due notice would be given of such
events as that of ' the landing of a colony of
cooks on the coast of America for the con-
version of cannibals and making them good eating
Christians.' At the office to which such news
gravitated those anxious for news would go, like
the butterwoman who called for a groat'sworth of
news to carry to her vicar. But the real value
of such information was well known by the better
classes. ' The Currantoes, or Weekly News,' wrote
a contemporary, * are all conceites ordinarily
which idle brains and busy fancies invented.'
' And,' he also added, ' they have used the trade
so long that now every one can say it is even

1 Measure for Measure, iv. iii. 5. 2 See his Staple of News.

1 86 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

as true as a currantoe, meaning that it is
false/

More lowly, more stable, and more honest
were the tradesmen of the time. We hear in
Shakespeare of the chandler whose wares were
dear ; * of the cutler whose knives were with
poetry graven ; 2 of one Sampson Stockfish,
fruiterer ; 3 and of the * fleshmonger working in
his shirt/4 with his venom-mouthed cur at his
side, ill-treated, without a doubt, and often sworn
at : for * butchers and tinkers were the greatest
fighters and most profound swearers'4 of the day.
There was the glover with his paring-knife ; 5
Master Three-pile, the mercer ; 6 Master Smooth,
the silkman ; 7 the pewterer, with the rapid motion
of his hammer ; 8 the potter, in company with his
wheel ; carpenters with leathern aprons ; brokers
with their pawns and treasures ; colliers who
* carry coals ' ; 9 and ' dyers, with their hands sub-
dued in nature to what they worked in ' ; 10 and
the clock-setter, who puts together the ' hundred
pieces ' of those German clocks, ' still a-repairing,
ever out of frame/ n There was Tom Snout, the

I i Henry IV., in. iii. 48. 2 Merchant of Venice, v. i. 149.

3 2 Henry IV., in. ii. 32.

4 Dekker, The Dead Terme, p. 13 5 2 Henry VI., iv. vii. 52.

5 Merry Wives of Windsor, i. iv. 21.

6 Measure for Measure, iv. iii. n. 7 2 Henry IV., n. i. 31.

8 Ibid., in. ii. 268. 9 Romeo and Juliet, i. i. 2.

10 A Mad World (Dodsley, Old English Plays}, v. p. 366.

II Lowers Labour' 's Lost, in. i. 192.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 187

tinker ; Snug, the joiner ; l Francis Flute/ bellows-
mender.2 There were botchers8 and haberdashers;4
women's tailors,5 and perfumed men's milliners ; 6
early carriers,7 whistling carmen,8 singing masons,9
poor mechanic porters,10 black chimney-sweeps,11
hardy washerwomen,12 rank flax- wenches ; 13 sailors
without their sea-gowns,14 posset sellers, orange-
wives, and oyster-wenches. The 'low-capped
tradesman ' 15 would ever be urging the * flat-
capped ' ones in their employ to shout ' What is 't
ye lack ? ' in a louder tone, while the latter would
stand with ' bare pates and dropping noses/ under
wooden penthouses, indulging in dreams of ' clubs
and bats/ or interjecting quotations from the
popular plays, as was their wont.

The most frequented of such shops, at least
by the gallants, would be the tobacconist's and
the barber's. The latter would have chairs that
fitted all comers,16 and perforated censers used for
fumigation.17 There would be a cithern, or some

I Midsummer Nighfs Dream, i. ii. 63. 2 Ibid., iv. i. 206.
3 Twelfth Night, i. v. 44. 4 Henry VIIL, v. iii. 45.

6 2 Henry IV., in. ii. 160. 6 i Henry IV., i. iii. 36.

7 Ibid., ii. i. 36. 8 2 Henry IV., in. ii. 322.
9 Henry V., I. ii. 198. 10 Ibid., 200.

II Love's Labour 's Lost, iv. iii. 262.

12 Cf. Merry Wives of Windsor, i. ii. 5.

13 Winter's Tale, i. ii. 277. 14 Hamlet, v. ii. 13.

15 Marston, Eastward Hoe, i. i. i6zff.

16 All's Well that Ends Well, n. ii. 17.

17 Taming of the Shrew, iv. iii. 91.

1 88 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

other instrument, for customers to play on ; and
sometimes a list of forfeits 1 or fines would hang on
one of the walls, to be imposed for bad behaviour,
naturally with the intention of keeping up the
standard of conduct in a place of such public resort.
A tobacconist's shop would be primarily an
apothecary's. If the owner of the establishment
were popular he would receive pupils whom he
would initiate into the mysteries of the smoking
art, and instruct them in particular as to the
way of blowing rings. Such a man would be
careful, like Drugger, not to * sophisticate ' his
tobacco with c sack-lees or oil ' ; 2 nor would he
c wash it in muscadel and grains ' : nor ' bury it
underground wrapped up in greasy leather.' He
would, however, keep it in * fine lily pots ' that,
when opened, smelt like c conserve of roses/ At
such a fashionable place there would be a maple-
block and silver tongs, Winchester pipes and fire
of Juniper, all ready for the passing customer.
And doubtless such an apothecary would have
a great chance of obtaining a competency and of
being ' remembered with Lady Ramsey and grave
Gresham.' 3 This would be an ambition of thrifty
business men. For the acts of such would ' be-

1 Measure for Measure y v. i. 320. Cf. Rules for Seemly Behaviour,
adduced by Dr. Kenric, but rejected by some critics as spurious.

2 Ben Jonson, Alchemist, i. i.

3 Chapman and Marston, Eastward Hoe.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 189

come posies for hospitals,' their * names would be
written on conduits/ and their deeds played in
their lifetime by the best companies of actors.
Such was the dream of many an Elizabethan
tradesman which buoyed him up in his hours of
business strain and stress.

Turning now to the Home-life of the Eliza-
bethans, their house-appointments and style of
life, we can obtain from the dramatists a number
of details which shall set up in their light and
shade many of the splendours of the mansion of
the time, with its * bay-windows transparent as
barricadoes/ 1 its quadrangles 2 and turrets,3 its
jutty, frieze, and buttress,4 and its * cloud-capped
towers/ 5

There can be but little doubt that Shakespeare
gained admittance now and again to some of those
stately palaces which Thorpe, or Adams, or Jansen,
among other famous architects, erected amid the
lovely scenery of England. For in such places
masques or entertainments were often given in
honour of some Tudor Maecenas by my Lord
Chamberlain's servants.

In his plays we can accompany the poet past
the steward, 'in the chain of gold/6 past the
pages and foot-boys,7 kissing their hands and

1 Twelfth Nightt iv. ii. 37. 2 z Henry VI., i. Hi. 154.

3 i Henry VI., I. iv. 26. 4 Macbeth, I. vi. 6. 5 Tempest, iv. i. 152.
6 Middleton, A Mad World, 11. i. * Henry VIII., v. ii. 25.

1 90 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

curtseying with their left legs : * on into the house
trimmed by the serving-men l in their blue coats
and ribbons, their white stockings and silver
badges — Nicholas, Philip, Walter, Sugarsop * and
the rest. We can partake of the tempting
Elizabethan greeting with its hospitable kisses
and smiles,2 and then tread ' the senseless rushes,' 3
as green as summer,4 strewed on the floor, as we
step into the perfumed chambers5 that await us.
We can peer, as we go, through the curtains at
couches, soft and sweet, with their c valance of
Venice gold in needlework/6 and their downy
pillows.7 We can gaze in wonder at the coloured
sunlight streaming through the coats of arms
annealed on lofty windows ; and in the parlour
we can hear the conference by the fire,8 read the
chimney-posies, study the painted cloth 9 with the
mottoes worked on it, admire the ' China dishes,' l
or, when silence comes, listen to the tender music
of the virginal.

1 Taming of the Shrew, iv. i. 87 ff.

2 Cf. Winter s Tale, I. ii. 3 Romeo and Juliet, I. iv. 36.

4 Beaumont and Fletcher, Valentinian, p. 24.

5 2 Henry IV., in. i. 12.

6 Taming of the Shrew, n. i. 346.

7 Cymbeline, in. vi. 35. 8 Taming of the Shrenv, v. ii. 103.

9 Troilus and Cressida, v. x. 4. Cf. Perlin, Description d 'Angle-
terre, 1552, p. ii : l Des toilles pinctes, qui sont bien faictes aux
quelles y a force et magnifiques roses, couronees ou il y a fleurs de
Liz et Lions.'

10 Measure j or Measure, n. i. 97.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 191

There are galleries we may wander in, galleries
with curtained pictures ; l or, an it please us,
curious - knotted gardens,2 circummured with
brick.3 In the state sleeping-rooms we can see
old-fashioned oak bedsteads of enormous size,
richly carved and hung with tapestry, like the
Bed of Ware which has lived to be famous ;
while in smaller rooms are ' standing beds ' 4 for
those of rank, truckle beds for the servants. In
an outhouse would be a coach, held by neigh-
bouring rustics to be a crabshell brought out of
China. In the garret would be an armourer
scouring coats of steel ; 5 in the pantry a bread-
chipper ; 6 in the kitchen the sewers who tasted the
dishes ; and cooks as well, who killed c fowls of
season,' 7 and roasted them with the aid of their
' turnspit dog bound to the wheel.1 8 All would
be ranked among the retainers and would be
subject to those instructions and lessons of
morality which the mistress of the house hung up
below-stairs for the benefit of her servants.

One of the most important demesnes that
Shakespeare might have seen was that of None-
such in Surrey. If he ever paid a visit to this
particular mansion, there he would have revelled

1 Twelfth Night, i. v. 232. 2 Loves Labour's Lost, I. i. 244.

3 Measure for Measure, iv. i. 28.

4 Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. v. 7. 6 2 Henry VL, i. iii. 191.
6 2 Henry IV., n. iv. 242. 7 Measure for Measure y n. ii. 84.
8 Marston, Eastward Hoe, n. iii. 282.

1 92 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

in ' hangings all of Tyrian tapestry,' x in ' Turkey
cushions bossed with pearl,' z in plate of rare
device,3 in figured goblets 4 and in jewels of rich
and exquisite form.5 There he would have found
quaint court-cupboards,6 ivory coffers, cypress
chests, arras and counterpoints.7 And there, while
' brave attendants ' waited on the guests with
* diapers of fine linen/ the latter would cool
their hands with silver basins ' full of rose-water
and bestrewed with flowers.'8 There on the
terrace, planted around with orange-trees and
laurels, might he have listened sadly to strains ot
music floating outwards from the hall, and have
dreamt of * such a night ' as that on which
Lorenzo distilled his love to willing Jessica.9

But what makes it more than likely that Shake-
speare actually viewed these royal halls of None-
such is the fact that he mirrors in enthusiastic
poetry several of the artistic masterpieces of
classical myth, which stood within the palace or
its grounds.

When lachimo leads the way to the bed-
chamber of Imogen, and describes the cutter's
delicate work — ' Chaste Dian bathing ' 10 — he de-

1 Taming of the Shrew, n. i. 342. 2 Ibid., n. i. 346.

3 Cymbeline, i. vii. 189. 4 Richard II., in. iii. 150.

5 Cymbeline, I. vii. 190. 6 Romeo and Juliet, i. v. 8.
* Taming of the Shrew, II. i. 344.

8 Ibid., Induction, i. 56.

9 Cf. Merchant of Venice, v. i. 69. 10 Cymbeline, n. iv. 82.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 193

picts the very carving of the goddess which
adorned a grove in Nonesuch Park. When the
poet describes Sir Actaeon, with the hounds,
* driving upon his new - transformed limbs/ l
might it not have been suggested by the repre-
sentation of Dian's ill-fated lover which stood, too,
within the same princely grounds ? Perhaps we
might even conjecture that the tapestry displaying
proud Cleopatra when she met her Roman ; 2 the
andirons moulded as 'two winking Cupids of
silver';2 the golden cherubs fretted on the ceiling
of Imogen's room,2 and all the * wanton pictures '
of Daphne roaming through the thorny wood, or

* Adonis, painted by a running brook ;
And Cytherea all in sedges hid/ 3

pictures which poor Christopher Sly awoke to
find his own, — that all these paintings and designs
were reminiscences of sculptures and paintings at
Nonesuch.4

It seems probable, too, that it was in the
palaces of the new nobility, whither so many
treasures of Italian and Dutch art found their
way, that Shakespeare became acquainted with
the gems of foreign workmanship which he so
delicately introduces into his writings. For this

1 Titus Andronicus, 11. iii. 64 j cf. Merry Wives of Windsor, II. i. 1 1 8.
a Cymbeline, n. iv. 70 and 90. 3 Taming of the Shrew, Induction, ii.
4 Cf. article in Gentleman s Magazine for 1837, quoting Houf-
nagle and Hentzner.

N

i94 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

is far more probable than to assume that they
were suggested to him by continental travel. lo,
beguiled and surprised,1 was a subject that appealed
to many artists of the Renascence ; and it is only
natural that the great dramatist should have
included the picture of Jupiter's wandering love
amongst those scenes which, with music making
' a dulcet and heavenly sound/ 2 were set to trick
the Protean tinker. It is true that the lo of
Coreggio was then on view at Milan and was the
admiration of travellers. But, on the other hand,
a picture of lo and Jupiter graced the gallery of
the Duke of Buckingham at this very time — a
picture attributed to Holbein on Horace Wai-
pole's authority.8 So that Shakespeare was pro-
bably indebted to a native source for his picture
of lo. Neither is it remarkable that in the
Winter s Tale, Shakespeare represents * that rare
Italian master, Julio Romano/ 4 as executing the
statue of Hermione. Romano was that pupil of
Raphael who most strikingly blended the idealism
of his master with the realistic strength of Michael
Angelo. His style appealed intimately to the
British mind, and although he was better known
as a painter than a sculptor, the poet selects him
solely on account of the artistic power ascribed

1 'Taming of the Shrew, Induction, ii. 54. 2 Ibid., i. 54.

3 Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting, vol. i. p. 148.

4 Winter's Tale, v. ii. 96.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 195

to him in the play — the power of putting breath
into his work and tricking Nature of her custom.
Moreover, in order to make more expressive the
scene where Hermione comes back into the
world as a breathing statue, the supposed figure
had to be clothed and painted in life-like colours.
And this combination of the brush and chisel
would have appeared not impossible to any Eliza-
bethan who was acquainted with the city statues,
* painted,' as Ben Jonson said, ' in most orient
colours.' l

Of the vast profusion in Elizabethan feasts
and meals, essentially in keeping with the magnifi-
cence of portly mansions, there is but small
evidence in Shakespeare. His references to the
customs of the table are but few and scattered.

The churlish philosopher in Timon of Athens
gives an example of the manner in which grace was
often said * in metre ' ; 2 and Gratiano's scoffing
wit has a word of mockery for those * well-
studied in a sad ostent,'3 those who were wont
to hood their eyes with their hat at the ' thanks-
giving before meat.'4 Breakfast5 and dinner,6

1 Ben Jonson, Magnetic Lady, v. iv.

2 Cf. also Measure for Measure, I. ii. 22.

3 Merchant of Venice, n. iii. 190. From this it appears that hats
were worn at meals and only removed when grace was said.

4 Measure for Measure, I. ii. 16.

5 Merry Wives of Windsor, in. iii. 246.

6 Much Ado about Nothing, n. iii. 212.

196 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

supper1 and after-supper2 are all incidentally
mentioned. Occasionally the carpet 3 is laid for
a convivial feast, for a wedding dinner,4 after
which the bride's elder sisters, still unmarried,
' danced barefoot ; 5 or for a sad burial feast,6
with its * funeral baked meats.' 7 At most great
tables the company was usually arranged in fours.
Biron said, not without significance, that his three
companions lacked him as a fourth * to complete
the mess.' 8 At times a banquet would he made
c ready in the privy chamber,' 9 or again, sporting
gallants might hastily partake of that collation
known as the ' running banquet.'

After dinner or supper, the domestic fool — that
chartered jester — would appear. He would be
distinguished by his calf-skin coat, buttoned down
the back ; or else he might wear ' a garded coat,"
with * a great dagger.' l His head would be
closely shaven. He would jest in season and
out of season, but only a capricious master would
have him 'whipped for taxation.'1 His privi-
leges, as a rule, were very great, as also was the
affection he would win from those of the house-
hold, not only by his good-humoured fun, but

1 Merchant of Venice, n. ii. 122.

2 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, v. i. 34.

3 Teaming of the Shrew, iv. i. 52. 4 Ibid., in. ii. 218.
5 Ibid., n. i. 33. 6 Romeo and Juliet, iv. v. 87.
7 Hamlet, i. ii. 179. 8 Lovis Labours Lost, iv. iii. 204.
9 Henry nil., i. iv. 98. l° Fletcher, Noble Gentleman, v. i.
" As You Like It, i. ii. 81.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 197

also by the pathos which continually enfolded
him. In Holbein's picture of Sir Thomas
More's family this fact would appear, for
Patison, the Fool, is the only servant repre-
sented in the picture ; and the endearment with
which he was regarded by the family becomes
evident. The entertainment of the Fool, how-
ever, was, in Shakespeare's time, already dying
out. It was not easy to find men capable of
playing the part. And since the little wit that
fools had was grown silent, ' the little folly that
wise men ' had, made ' the greater show.' * At
public entertainments the city fool would still
be retained. But the humour expected of him
would be of a grosser kind than would please the
great houses. He would have to jump into a
large, deep custard, and so * set on a quantity of
barren spectators to laugh.' In earlier times the
Fools had tickled the laughter delicately, as the
wine warmed the heart. They ' that had good
wits, had much to answer for ' ; like Touchstone,
they would be flouting ; they could not hold.2

Shakespeare does not dwell on the material
side of things when he depicts the home-life of
his contemporaries. Details which a Petronius
would have revelled in setting out, find but small
description in his pages. The few details which
he gives seem to be given mainly for a comic
effect, and are connected chiefly with those whose

1 As You Like //, I. ii. 84. Ibid., v. i. 16.

198 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

humour moved along homely grooves, like Sir
Andrew Aguecheek, who put down his damaged
wit to his beef-eating propensity. Such good
honest souls, redolent with c brown bread and
garlic/ l might occasionally season their sallies
with allusions to those necessaries of life in
which their dura ilia delighted. It is therefore in
connection with them that we hear of Tewkes-
bury mustard 2 and soft Banbury cheese,3 of
pippins 4 and neat's foot,5 of neat's tongue dried,6
and stuffed rabbit,7 of an old hoar hare8 for a
Lenten pie,9 of capons burned, and pigs fallen
from the spit,10 of soused gurnet n and stock
fishes,12 old apple John and shotten herrings,13
and humble warden pies coloured with saffron.14
With those who ate such dainties no 'kissing
comfits ' u were needed to sweeten the breath.

No stress, however, is laid by Shakespeare on
those chines of beef15 which loaded the dresser in
the manorial hall, bustling with trencher-knight,
and server.16 He does not linger much with carved

1 Measure for Measure, in. ii. 185. z 2 Henry W., ii. iv. 244.

3 Merry Wives of Windsor, i. i. 130. 4 Ibid.9 i. ii. 13.

5 Taming of the Shrevj, iv. iii. 17. 6 i Henry IP., n. iv. 255.
1 Taming of the Shrevu, iv. iv. 101.

8 Romeo and "Juliet, ii. iv. 135. 9 Ibid., 136.

10 Comedy of Errors, i. ii. 44. u i Henry W., iv. ii. n.

12 Measure for Measure, in. ii. m.

13 i Henry W., ill. iii. 5 ; ibid., ii. iv. 134.

14 Winter's Tale, iv. ii. 48 ; Merry Wives of Windsor, v. v. 22.

16 Henry V.,\\\. vii. 164. 1G Love's Labour's Lost, v. ii. 464.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 199

pasties,1 flavoured with dates and quinces ; 2 nor
with those delectable junkets,3 rising in crenel-
lated turrets from the well-laden table ; nor again
with those more delicate viands which were
* caviare to the general/4 We can only catch a
passing glimpse of the immutable distinction so
emphatically proclaimed by other Elizabethan
writers between the * salt-butter rogue ' 5 to whom
c conserves of beef'6 were as luscious as locusts,
and the well-derived gentleman, on the other
hand, who would relish a hot venison pasty,7 and
would taste in his arbour after supper, and before
his posset,8 a last year's pippin, with a dish of
caraways.9

Jonson, however, could work up more en-
thusiasm over the culinary art, and he describes
in detail how a good cook would be a professor,
an engineer, and a mathematician all in one. For
the tables of the great he would design and draw,
paint and carve, and build citadels of curious
fowl and fish. Sometimes he would dig ditches
and arrange moats of broth ; or again cut fifty-
angled custards, rear bulwark pies, and for

1 Taming of the Shrew, iv. iii. 89.

2 Romeo and Juliet , iv. iv. 2.

3 Taming of the Shrew, in. ii. 247. 4 Hamlet, n. ii. 457.

5 Merry Wives of Windsor, n. ii. 274.

6 Taming of the Shrew, Induction, ii. 7.

7 Merry Wives of Windsor, i. i. 191. 8 Ibid., v. v. 180.
9 2 Henry W., v. iii. 3.

200 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

his outer works raise ramparts of immortal
crusts.

From other contemporaries, too, we can gather
something more about the various tables kept,
and the methods of serving. At the table of a
mean Country Justice, besides the ' cheap salads,
sliced beef, giblets, and <c pettitoes," ' sometimes
at the lower end there would be great, cumber-
some, uncut-up pies, filled with moss and stones,
partly to make a show with, and partly < to keep
the lower mess from eating.' The gentlemen at
the table would carouse in wine with which many
would take sugar ; the clowns would ' use large
drinking of beere or ale.' l

Things would be served up differently in
different places. At city feasts the meat would
* come sneaking in, one dish a quarter of an hour
after another/ * at hunting-breakfasts, all the dishes
at once 1 ; while with the old-fashioned, the courses
would be brought in by ' a score of bleer-eyed
serving-men in long blue coats,' l bringing old
memories in their train. But at public and
private feasts alike, drinking excesses were the
rule. According to a contemporary, 'In some
gentlemen's houses, with some captains and
soldiers, with also the vulgar sort of citizens and
artisans, large and intemperate drinking is used.' 2

1 Beaumont and Fletcher, Woman Hater, I. ii.

2 Moryson, Itinerary, p. 3.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 201

But he also adds that ' the greater and better part
of the English hold all excess blameworthy, and
drunkenness a reproachful vice/ However true
this may be, the keeping of the wassail was a
custom firmly fixed in Shakespeare's time, al-
though it may have been one * more honoured
in the breach than in the observance.' The
English of his time were ' stubborn drinkers.'
< Than an Englishman,' said another playwright,
* not a leak at sea can suck more liquor. You
shall have their children christened in mulled
sack, and at five years old, able to knock a Dane
down.' *

The description of the Christmas festivities of
1604-5 by a contemporary also will probably in
this connection be recalled. How, at the revels,
Hope, Faith, and Charity appeared in rich dresses
before the King, and * Hope did essay to speak,
but wine rendered her endeavour so feeble that
she withdrew, and hoped the King would excuse
her brevity. Faith was then all alone, for I am
certain she was not joined with good works, and
left the Court in a staggering condition. Charity
then came to the King's feet, and seemed to
cover the multitude of sins her sisters had com-
mitted. ... I ne'er did see such lack of good
order, discretion, and sobriety.' The stigma
which rested on the country was certainly not

1 Beaumont and Fletcher, Captain, in. ii.

202 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

without foundation, and drinking bouts must have
made many a manor resound with cries, which, to
its dishonour, had been caught from the Court.

A more interesting side of Elizabethan life,
however, is that of its public amusements. Some
of these have already been mentioned, either in
connection with the country or else with the
metropolis. The greatest and most general of
such amusements has yet to be touched upon, for
it was in their theatres that the English people found
their most lasting pleasure. It was the theatre
that nourished their complex natures, fed their
enthusiasms, and stirred their feelings.

There is in Shakespeare's dramas much that
had characterised the English stage when but in
embryo ; and in addition to such survivals of
the past, they also contain flashes caught from
the pageantry of the time.

The poet's first acquaintance with the stage
must have been made when companies of strolling
players came to Stratford, or when he met them
trudging with their carts along country roads
towards Kenilworth or Warwick. Perhaps the
moralities represented on so many a village
scaffold were among the first forms in which he
saw any histrionic representation at all. In any
case, much that characterised this old crude act-
ing finds an echo in his plays, and also in some of
his contemporaries.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 203

The ' formal vice ' l of Shakespeare's youth,

' Who with dagger of lath,
In his rage and his wrath,

Cried "Ah, ha!" to the devil,'2

stepped into the Elizabethan drama as the clown ;
and in this way the memory of the ' grey Iniquity ' J
of the moral plays was successfully kept green.
The grave-diggers in Ham/et, too, are surely
remembrances of the Antic who sat in the
c motion ' by the puppet Vanity,4 c scoffing his
state and grinning at his pomp.' 5

The pageants of the Trade Guilds (into whose
hands the drama came after the old miracle plays,
and who exhibited regularly at London, Coventry,
York, and Chester) are also represented in
Shakespeare's works, when he carefully distin-
guishes Quince as a carpenter ; Smug as a joiner ;
Bottom, a weaver ; Snout, a tinker ; and Starve-
ling, a tailor. This characteristic of his Mid-
summer Nighfs Dream is obviously a laughing
recollection of those old guild players, * hard-
handed men,' who had * never laboured in their
minds ' till then. For in those earlier days the
audience would behold their friends, the baker,
the tanner, the carpenter, and the cook, all on the

1 Richard III., in. i. 82. 2 Twelfth Night, iv. ii. 129 ff.

3 i Henry IV., n. iv. 500. 4 King Lear, 11. ii. 36.

5 Richard II., in. ii. 162.

204 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

scaffolding, impersonating patriarchs, devils, or
angels to the best of their ability.

When the player recites * Eneas' tale to Dido *
before the Danish prince, he is unconsciously
burlesquing the windy bombast of the popular
stage when a sword would be called c a blade, a
bloody, blameful blade,' 1 while rebels might have
the style of ' vaporous villeins with venim vul-
nerate,' or ' prating parenticides, plexious to
pinnositee.' The ' Pyramus and Thisbe ' story,
as handled by the Athenian artisans in A Mid-
summer Night's Dream, seems, moreover, to be
a skit on the classical dramas of the day, charac-
terised as they were by an absence of dignity
and an extravagance of style, with the jingling
doggerel of their prologues in ' eight and six/ and
with their far-fetched fancies embedded in gro-
tesque invocations. There are, in fact, in Shake-
speare alone, many fossil remains of the earlier
stage ; and his plays afford not a few hints of the
various phases the drama had gone through
within his memory, as it sped on its way from
Chester's Morality to the Hamlet of the Globe.

But the same cause which prompted him to
trace occasionally those primitive shows which
had delighted town and country, also induced
him to look upon the stage at large as a fruitful
tree from which to pluck metaphors and similes.

1 A poem of 1537.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 205

He would draw on the popular sports freely for
such things, but the drama was even nearer to the
people, and his debt to the latter is consequently
still greater. Thus he forcibly likens the orator
courting his audience's favour, to the player whom
the c tag-rag ' 1 people alternately clap and hiss ;
the exiled statesman to the dull actor who has
forgotten his part ; 2 and the derided king to the
tedious prattler who tries to entertain ' after the
well-graced actor leaves the stage.' 3 In his eyes
the scheming politician is but one who does

* Counterfeit the deep tragedian,
Speak, and look back, and pry on every side,
Tremble and start at wagging of a straw,
Intending deep suspicion.'4

Life is ' but a poor player that struts and frets his
hour upon the stage and then is heard no more,' 5
while the world is a * great stage of fools,' 6 a
theatre * to feed contention in a lingering act.' 7

The fact that such metaphors were among the
most pregnant employed by the dramatist, would
suffice to show how close the stage lay to the heart
of the people, even if the persistent inveighings
against the flocking to the theatres,8 against ' pre-

1 Julius Casar, I. ii. 260. 2 Coriolanus, v. iii. 40.

3 Richard II., v. ii. 24. 4 Richard ///., in. v. 6.

5 Macbeth, v. v. 25. 6 King Lear, iv. vi. 182.

7 2 Henry 17., i. i. 156.

8 Stubbes, Anatomic of Abuses (1583), p. 90.

206 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

sentments clothed in vocal sound/ 1 had not led
to the same conclusion. The glow of the play-
house reached out far and lit up all classes, from
the courtier at Greenwich, who would gracefully
listen to c an excellent conceited comedie,' to the
bargee on the Thames, who accompanied the splash
of his oars with monologues of Tamburlaine.

Concerning the actor and his bearing, the stage
and its surroundings, much can also be gathered
from the Shakespearean drama ; for the Roscian
art as he knew it, found in him a keen critic.

There were several points in connection with
the actor's conception of his art which Shakespeare
could not approve of. The extemporisation
already mentioned, so frequent on the Elizabethan
stage, was in the first place greatly to be deplored.
And when Shakespeare exclaims that the clowns
ought ' to speak no more than is set down for
them/ 2 he is inveighing against an evil which was
wont to corrode much of the finest metal in the
dramatic output. The clown's commonplace
would inevitably have a false jarring note in a
play of poetic tendency.

Then some clowns would laugh, to spread the
contagion, neglecting for a time the course of the
play. This slight could not but earn the resent-
ment of the greatest of dramatists. It showed,
moreover, ' a most pitiful ambition in the fool '

1 Beaumont and Fletcher, Prophetess, iv. i. 2 Hamlet, in. ii. 41.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 207

who used it, the grossest ignorance of the end
of comedy.

There also were ranting, ' robustious, periwig-
pated fellows/ who would mouth their speeches
and c tear a passion to tatters/ l Such actors would
be the offspring of the bearded Herods of the
old mystery plays, the speech of which crude
figures had been like ' a chime a- mending/ 2 They
had been wont to strut across the scene, to

' Think it rich

To hear the wooden dialogue and sound
'Twixt their stretch'd footing and the scaffbldage.' 2

But the best actors of Shakespeare's day would
avoid this out-heroding of Herod and 'speak
their speeches trippingly on the tongue/ Those
who would strut and bellow had ' neither the
accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian,
pagan, nor man/

It must, however, be remembered that this
' o'erdoing Termagant ' 3 was also to some extent
the result of existing conditions on the English
stage. It was 1660 before a woman appeared in any
rote, and it is hard to see how the contrast between
the strength of an Othello and the clinging tender-
ness of a Desdemona could possibly be exhibited, if
the same quality of masculine notes gave utterance

1 Hamlet, in. ii. 9. 2 Troilus and Cressida, I. iii. 155 ff.

3 Hamlet, in. ii. 15.

208 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

to the bride's tearful love-words and to the virile
wrath of the Moor. This absence of woman
from womanly parts was undoubtedly another
grave disability under which Shakespeare's stage
laboured, and one which seriously crippled the
actor's possibilities. It not only helped to keep
up the ranting traditions, but it added to the
discord which, from other causes, was associated
with the stage. The extent of the evil can be
gathered from a statement of the Restoration
days,1 lamenting the fact that girls of fifteen were
represented on the stage by men of fifty, who,
with their awkward size and lack of sensibility,
suggested giants rather than maids. Even when
the parts were taken by children, there was a
complete want of verisimilitude in the shrill treble
of the young ' eyases ' who cried ' out on the top
of question,' 2 when it was remembered that low-
speaking maidens were being represented. Possibly
more than one contemporary was longing for a
more fitting treatment of those womanly parts
which were the glory of their age of the drama.

1 Cf. the Prologue written by Thomas Jordan for the revival of
Othello, when for the first time the part of Desdemona was taken
by a woman, Mrs. Hughes (December 8, 1660):

* For to speak truth, men act, that are between
Forty or fifty, wenches of fifteen,
With bone so large and nerve so uncompliant :
When you call "Desdemona," enter giant.'

2 Hamlet, 11. ii. 344.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 209

Of Shakespeare's own wish there can be no
question.

When Rosalind in the Epilogue to As You
Like It promised to kiss as many men as pleased
her if she were a woman, the usual method of
female representation is merely implied, though
there is a tinge of regret in the avowal. The
same custom is also merely hinted at when Julia,1
disguised as a youth, playfully boasts of having
taken the part of Ariadne at the Pentecost
pageant. But it is in the mouth of Cleopatra,
the most passionate, the most sensitive of
all his women characters, that a definite protest
is placed by the poet. On her downfall she
moans that the love-ties between Antony and
herself will be desecrated at a later day by ' some
squeaking Cleopatra boy/2 intended to stage
her greatness. The poet who created a Juliet, a
Beatrice, an Imogen, cannot but have wished for
his creatures to be interpreted on the boards
with that passion and coy emotion which only
a woman's genius was capable of imparting.

In the course of the Elizabethan drama, there
becomes manifest, too, certain features of the
relationship which existed between the stage and
its audience. Then, as now, the audience would
be mixed in character. Some would have come c to

1 Two Gentlemen of Verona, iv. iv. 160 ff.

2 Antony and Cleopatra, v. ii. 218.

O

210 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

take their ease and sleep an act or two . . . others
to hear the city abused extremely, and to cry,
<c That 's witty." ' l There would be Lord's rooms
for the grandees, which corresponded most nearly
with the modern stage-boxes. But the fashion-
able young gallants would have stools on the
stage 2 where they would be attended by impudent
boys who saw to their pipes, fetched their ale,
and begged for money. These young bucks 3
would hie to the theatre after their dinner, and
a well-known character would cause a murmur
on entering the house. His companions in great-
ness would salute him on the stage ; he would
choose his comrade, take his seat, and start his
quizzing. In the audience, besides, there might
be ladies, but they wore black masks, for more
reasons than one, and kept aloof from the stage
and the pit alike. In the latter place would
surge the groundlings,4 who were of varying
degrees of worthlessness. There would be
the critics with their pocket-books or ' writing-
tables ' ;5 those also whose living was dishonestly
made by industrious pirating of plays. There
would be ' your sinful sixpenny mechanic ' and

1 Henry FIIL, Epilogue.

2 Cf. Webster's Introduction to Marston's Malcontent, vol. i.
p. 199.

3 Beaumont and Fletcher, Woman Hater, i. iii.

4 Hamlet, in. ii. 12. 5 Marston, Malcontent, Induction, 18 j and
Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour, iv. ii.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 211

those c who buy their sport by the penny.' 1
There would be the youths who thundered at a
playhouse and fought for bitten apples,2 youths
who relished * only a jig or a tale of bawdry'3
and who for the most part were ' capable of
nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise ' 4
— ' clapping, hissing, swearing, stamping, smiling,
applauding, scorning, liking, and reviling.' 5

During the play, a gallant might rise to vex
the players or to snub the poet.6 He might
have gone merely to exhibit a ' cloke ' ; when he
would c sit in the view, salute his acquaintances,
rise up between the acts and let fall his " cloke." ' 7
Shakespeare does not recognise these gallants,
but they affected his fellow-dramatists possibly
to a greater degree than they did him ; for
they are frequently alluded to in other than
Shakespearean plays, and the allusions always
take the form of protests. But the behaviour of
these vapid dilettantes would often be far prefer-
able to that of the groundlings. According to a
contemporary, if a looked-for appearance did not
come about, they would cry angrily 'how they
were coney-catched and cheated.' Some laughed,

1 Dekker, Gulfs Hornbook, p. 247.

2 Henry Fill., v. iii. 63. 3 Hamlet, n. ii. 506.

4 Ibid., m. ii. 14.

5 Cf. Taylor's Revenge, fol., pt. ii. p. 145.

6 Ben Jonson, Devil is an Ass, in. i. 248.

7 Ibid., i. iii.

212 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

some swore, some stamped and cursed. They
would pelt clay about, or stones and wood. One
would c madly sit like bottle-ale and hiss ' : another
4 madly would pluck off the tiles ' ; while some
might run ' to the door to get again their
coin/ *

But in spite of all their freely-vented humours>
Shakespeare's audiences must have shown a
marked appreciation of the poetic side of the
drama, and have pieced out the scenic im-
perfections with their thoughts.2 For the
limitations of the contemporary stage for re-
presenting life's realities were of the narrowest.
It could only give the faintest hint — one
that in its utter inadequacy often bordered on
the ridiculous — of such great historical events
as Bosworth,3 or Cade's rebellion,4 or of such
glimpses into Fairyland as the flight of Oberon
with Titania. It could not have been an easy
task for spectators to see c three ladies walke to
gather flowers,' 5 and straightway take the stage
for a garden ; or to c heare newes of a shipwreck
in the same place ' and immediately accept it for
a rock ; or, again, to realise that two armies
were rolling to battle when * four swordes and
bucklers ' were seen. It must often have been
felt that it was a most faulty representation of

1 Cf. Taylor's Revenge (Works, fol., Part II. p. 145).

2 Henry V., i. Chorus, 23. 3 Richard III.

4 2 Henry VI. 5 Sidney, Apologiefor Poetrie.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 213

' majestical affairs ' when the smallest rearrange-
ment of the stage had to stand for a most
extensive change of place. But despite the
apparent diminution of the difficulty which the
classical play had obtained in its obedience to the
unities, the English Romantic play kept on its
even way and attained a glory which any crip-
pling restrictions of time and play in its action
would only have decreased. A contemporary
might condemn the Englishman ' in the quality '
as c most vain, indiscrete and out of order ' ;
inasmuch as he grounded his work on improba-
bilities. For ' in three hours he would run
through the world, marry, get children, make
children men, bring gods from heaven and
devils from hell/ l But these * indiscretions ' were
not unintentionally made by the dramatists. If
the action of a play demanded a shift from the
English shores c athwart the sea ' 2 to the * vasty
fields of France/ or from the atmosphere of
spirits to the haunts of hempen homespuns,
these demands were candidly made by the poet
and readily met by the public. They would
project their felicitous fancy to the scenes, as the
poet asked, and within the wooden O — the globe
—they would see

' The very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt,' 3

1 Cf. also Ben Jon son, Every Man in his Humour, Prologue.

2 Henry 7., Prologue. 3 /^ ,4>

2i4 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

or, in the name of Time, use wings. There seems
to be something very much like a hint to this
effect in that farcical c abridgement/ already
mentioned, which Bottom the weaver and his
companions gave of Pyramus and his love. The
poet seems to smile at the necessity for it, but
also to claim the indulgence of the audience's
fancy when he there depicts the absurd make-
shifts by which the stage was trying to face the
question of realistic art. For though the lantern
carried by the ' hardhanded Athenian ' could never
suggest c the horny moon/ nor could his hand,
with fingers wide apart, suggest a crannied wall
wherethrough lovers might tell their c compleynt
of love/ yet ' the best in this kind are but as
shadows ' ; and Shakespeare's opinion of scenical
shortcomings would seem to be that

1 Never anything can be amiss
When simpleness and duty tender it ; ' 1

while imagination would amend the worst.

This suggestion gathers considerable point
from the fact that the ' properties ' of Bottom and
his methods of illusion were in truth but very
slightly different from those which were in use
on the best stages of the day. There would
often appear ' on the black stage for tragedies
and murders fell ' 2 a Prologue armed,3 ushered in

1 A Midsummer Night's Dream, v. i. 82-3. 2 Lucrece, vii. 66.
3 Troilus and Cressida, Prologue, 23.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 215

by the Trumpeter * who was always a Prologue's
prologue. And in this way would the deficiencies
of the dumb stage be made good, and necessary
explanations of time and place be given.

In addition to scenical deficiencies, however,
there existed more than one cause of complaint
which the true dramatic artist of the time had
against the stage. The c jigging veins of rhym-
ing mother-wits ' had passed away with the earliest
of the dramatists. But c the conceits/ which
* clownage kept in pay,' were still wont to dance
across the stage. The clown would come ' leap-
ing in,' then £ laugh and grin and frame his
mimic face/2 He would be 'cozened in the
cloth quarter/ a rogue would leap out upon him
and a * substantial watch steal in upon them and
take them away with mistaking words.' 3 This was
the tendency in stage-practice — a continual panto-
mime— which must have been most irksome to
those who viewed the drama seriously, and saw
in the clownage but c a noise of targets and a
fellow in a long motley cloak guarded with
yellow.' *

Another abuse of the stage lay in its continual
dedication of itself to bitter controversial uses.

1 Earle, Microcosmography, p. 48. 2 Hall, Satires.

3 Ben Jonson, Induction to Bartholomew Fairy speaking of
Tarleton.

4 Henry nil., Prologue, 15-16.

216 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

This has been already mentioned. The gibes
and taunts, which so often filled the theatres,
could not but detract from artistic aims, and
these continual aspersions soon grew as hateful,
save to those closely interested, as the empty
bubbles which clownage was for ever blowing.

Less widespread and less injurious was that
dramatic weakness which invaded the stage of the
early seventeenth century, for feeding the pride
which London citizens felt on account of their
civic militarism.1 A grocer's apprentice would
prove his valour in the face of giants, according
to a dramatist who wished to burlesque the craze.
He would be chosen city-captain at Mile-End,
would make a brave end, and in falling would
utter some memorable words to perpetuate his
nobility. These were the main abuses of the
stage. It was, however, a day when c manners,
now called humours,7 2 fed the stage. A peculiar
quality would so possess a man as to warp his
being and make his powers and spirits all run one
way ; 3 and such unnatural characters would be
often staged. But though unnatural they were
not unreal, for, as Jonson said : —

' No country's mirth is better than our own,
No clime breeds better matter for your whore,
Bawd, squire, impostor, many persons more.'2

1 Cf. Beaumont and Fletcher, Knight of the Burning Pestle.

2 Jonson, Alchemist, Prologue.

3 Cf. Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour ', Prologue.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 217

The plays at the universities were scarcely in as
good a way as those in town. c Few of the
university/ wrote a contemporary, ' pen plaies
well ; they smell too much of that writer Ovid
and that writer Metamorphosis, and talke too
much of Proserpina and Juppiter.' l

The main failing of the English stage then, as
viewed by contemporaries, was that ' indiscretion '
which was indissolubly connected with the advance
of their Romantic drama. As compared with
foreign stages, our English one stood high. For
the Italian was cso lascivious in his comedies
that honest hearers ' 2 were grieved. The French-
man and the Spaniard also followed the Italian
humour. But the German was * too holy,' for he
would ' present on every common stage ' what was
fit for the pulpit. There was much good senti-
ment and noble expression on the English stage.

The people who found a livelihood in the
drama were of various classes, but all were, more
or less, dwellers in Bohemia. There were stroll-
ing-players and players under noble patronage,
who would kneel on the stage at the end of their
play and pray for their patron.3 But patronised
and unpatronised alike had to put up with an
insulting public and with the companionship of

1 Return from Parnassus, Part II. iv. v.

2 Dedication of Whetstone's Prometheus and Cassandra.

3 Cf. Middleton, A Mad World, v. ii.

2i8 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

oftentimes rough fellow-actors. Shakespeare felt
all this, and he also felt the contempt which was
ever being heaped upon the profession he had
chosen. The children-actors, in Hamlet's opinion,
would only continue their life on the stage as a
last resort, ' if their means were no better.' l In
his Sonnets the great Dramatist even claims pity
for ' his nature subdued to what it works in/ for
had he not gone hither and thither and made
himself a motley to the view ?

Nor did the poets themselves always add
dignity to their calling, for the c true note ' of
such was often ' to swagger it well in a tavern
or domineer in a pot-house.' 2

But lowest of all was the status of the actor in
the country. In the town he would play on a
well-known stage ; his intention to play would be
announced on posts 3 in the neighbourhood of the
theatre, while the flag on the roof would denote
a performance in progress.4 Travelling players,
however, would have humbly to ' offer service ' at
the manor gates to the lord of the house. They
would ask him to accept their duty ' an 't pleased
him.' 5 Shakespeare himself more than once may
have chafed under this servile necessity and under
the welcome c given in the buttery ' (} to those

1 Hamlet, n. ii. 352. 2 Return from Parnassus, n.

3 Marston, Scourge of Villainy, vol. iii. p. 303.

4 Cf. Middleton, A Mad World, m. iii.

5 Taming of the Shrenv, Induction, i. 77. 6 Ibid., 102.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 219

who took the parts of kings and mobled queens,
of world-wide conquerors and mystic scholars. It
was but for a brief hour that the actors of that
day, throned in c Olymp/ would rule empires or
sell their souls grandly for universal knowledge.

Seasons of want would assail all alike, especially
the travellers. But even in town there would be
the dead season when ' knights would leave it,
taverns grow dead,' and not a feather would be
waving nor a spur jingling anywhere. Then
would the players be * at a stand/ and unless
many ' get-pennies ' had come to their aid in the
season past and given them the opportunity of
increasing their income, they would be destitute
and would anxiously await the reopening of the
Globe or the Curtain.

With regard to the Religion of Shakespeare's
generation there is much to be gathered from the
dramatic writings. But from no other dramatist
can the many-sided character of the Elizabethan
religion be better obtained than from Shakespeare ;
the reason obviously being that he was a partisan
of no one creed, while freely handling all. He
seems to have regarded the conflicting dogmas of
his time with tolerance and in silence. But religious
ceremonies frequently occur as perfunctory details,
though they are never marked with his approval or
disapproval. A christening would have its gossips,1

1 Two Gentlemen of Verona, in. i. 269.

220 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

its bearing cloths,1 and apostle's spoons.2
Maidens would be buried with virgin crants and
strewments ;3 suicides would have burial in cross-
ways and floods ;4 the marriage service would con-
sist of the vicar's interrogatives answered by the
contracting parties ; 5 while the sexton would see
to the ' quaffing of muscadel '6 at the church
door after the ceremony. Excommunications
would be made by bell, book, and candle ; 7 Ave-
Marias, and beads,8 psalms,9 hymns,10 and dirges11
would all form part of the ordinary service ;
there would be good honest priests who walked
in the ways of Sir Oliver Martext or Friar
Lorenzo ; and ambitious clerics who mingled
politics with religion. The Moor would deride
all Popish tricks and ceremonies.12 The Papist
would laugh at the Brownist13 and Puritan.14
Antonio would taunt Shylock,15 and Shylock in
return would swathe him in sarcasm.16 All
these reflected religious classes in Elizabethan
England, though of course the most numerous
were the orthodox Catholics and fervid Pro-

1 i Henry VL, i. iii. 42. 2 Henry VHL, v. iii. 168.

3 Hamlet, v. i. 240. 4 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, in. ii. 382.

6 Taming of the Shrew, in. ii. 160. 6 Ibid., 172.

7 King John, in. iii. 12.

8 2 Henry VL, i. iii. 56. 9 Winter f Tale, iv. ii. 47.
10 Romeo and Juliet, iv. v. 88. n Ibid.

12 Titus Andronicus, v. i. 76. 13 Twelfth Night, in. ii. 30.

14 Ibid., n. iii. 148. 15 Cf. Merchant of Venice, i. iii. in.

16 Ibid., in. i. 72.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 221

testants. Some again there were who questioned
all religion, following in the steps of Montaigne
and Bacon ; and unless Shakespeare were alone,
some there would be who, with a rare knowledge
of Scripture and a reverence for humanity,
cultivated a lofty religion dominated by no
creed, the tenets of which were distinct alike
from Puritan doctrine and from Papal dogma.

The Puritans who broke away from the
Established Church on questions of ritual were
among the most picturesque figures of a pictur-
esque age. In Shakespeare, however, they are
not highly coloured. It is to the contemporary
dramatists that one has to look for a detailed
picture of the foibles and fancies which made
these men of religion so often ridiculous.

One of the questions on which they had
separated was that of ritual, and in a play1 of the
time allusion is made to the Puritan dislike of
surplices, by mentioning such a one who on
seeing a surplice had straightway hung himself in
the bell-ropes of the church. ' Puritans/ accord-
ing to another contemporary, * were blown out of
the church with the loud voice of the organ :
their zealous spirits could not endure the
music/2 Their attitude towards festivals would
be one of unbending hostility. They would
boast of keeping no holy days nor fasts, but

1 Hollander. 2 Lupton, London and Country Carbonadoed.

222 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

* of eating most flesh on Fridays/1 To more
worldly things they would be equally hostile.
Like Hope-on-high Barnby,2 they would follow
not the ' painted pipes of worldly pleasures ' ;
they would spit on the hobby-horse as the * beast
that signified destruction.' Towards ' sweet
poetry ' they would turn as ' venom-bearing
spiders '3 and would succeed in finding poison,
whence others, like bees, drew the finest honey.
Little and diminutive would be the Puritan ruff.
They would live in charity, but would c give small
alms to such as were not of the right sect.'4 They
would say * inspired graces ' which were * able to
starve a wicked man with their length.' They
would worship in seclusion, and seek, if need be,
lonely woods, and ' obscure holes.' To such,
bells would be profane, though a tune might be
religious.5 They of the separation would hope
that all ' Canaanites ' might be converted and
stand up for 'the beauteous discipline'6 against
the iniquitous Rome. For those ' seeds of
sulphur, the wicked,' they would seek at fairs
and merry-makings, and Tribulation Whole-
some, and numerous others of the brethren
would denounce with holy rage Spanish slops,
idolatrous breeches, and ruffs of pride. The

1 Middleton, Familie of Lo<ve, in. iii.

2 Fletcher, Woman Phased, iv. i.

3 Beaumont and Fletcher, Triumph of 'Honour, ad fin.

4 Middleton, Familie of Lo<ve.

5 Jonson, Alchemist, in. ii. 6 Ibid., HI. i.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 223

more worldly members would rail against plays in
general to please the Alderman whose ' daily
custard'1 they devoured; while others like Zeal-of-
the-land Busy would enrich themselves by cozen-
ing heirs with whose inheritances they had been
intrusted.2 In spite of all, their tenets advanced
and their influence was felt, for Jonson ridiculed
the city magistrates for showing their religion by
* pulling down a superstitious cross and advancing
a Venus in place of it.'8 If there were more
Puritans like Mr. Mulligrub, whose last words
breathed forgiveness to all his creditors/ there
would be some warrant for attaching to the
Puritan discipline more humour than at present
the sect has credit for.

Besides the creeds, the questions of royalty and
princely right gave rise at the time to many a
dispute ; and on these monarchical institutions
Shakespeare has bestowed some attention in his
works, and to them has given repeated praise.
After the break-up of feudalism, the Crown
began to proclaim the Divine Right in tones
stentorian : and King James found a style for
himself in ' His Most Sacred Majesty.' But this
view of the King was not in absolute agreement
with the idea entertained in general by his people
on the subject. The broader minds would
remember ' what infinite heart's ease must

1 Jonson, Alchemist, in. ii. 2 Jonson, Bartholomew Fair.

3 Cynthia's Revels, i. i. * The Puritan.

OF THF

UNIVERSITY

or
H

224 SHAKESP£M^#ND HIS DAY

kings neglect that private men enjoy';1 but
in that cause for gratitude, might find no reason
for the admission of a Divine prerogative. Many
an Elizabethan would doubtless say 'the king is
but a man as I am,' . . . his ceremonies laid by,2
and would find increased difficulty in subscribing
to that divinity which was said to hedge about a
king. Those popular opinions which in the reign
of James's successor were destined to inflict so
severe a blow on the Crown, were already gathering
strength. * What 's a Prince ? ' rhetorically asked a
character in Chapman's Gentleman Usher, ten years
before Shakespeare's death.

' Had all been virtuous men,
There never had been Prince upon the earth,
And so no subject : all men had been Princes :
A virtuous man is subject to no Prince,
But to his soul and honour.'3

To the people of the time, unscrupulous
policies and Machiavellian scheming, however
firmly they might seat a monarch on the throne,
could never confer the least pretence to Divine
Right. And these opinions were not unshared
by Shakespeare. The unscrupulous policy of the
throne, the intemperate abuse of royal power, and
the evils accruing to each, were unmistakably

1 Henry V., iv. i. 234. 2 Ibid., iv. i. 100.

3 Actv.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 225

shadowed in his great historical plays. And
Bolingbroke, when a century later he evolved his
theory of the c Patriot King/ might have found
the leading points of his subject laid down in
these same works of Shakespeare.

Towards superstition, that remnant of the dark
ages, which was still potent in the Jacobean era,,
Shakespeare's attitude was very much akin to that
of Jonson and Middleton. All the authors
whose plays were acted on the London stage were
free from mystical prejudices. They had no
belief in the fanciful deceptions of medieval
science, or medieval ignorance. But they did
not spurn the use of the same for stage effects,
while occasionally they staged the dark fancies
merely to deride them for the comfort of the
credulous. Shakespeare, who repeatedly intro-
duced the air of magic and the sorcerer's craft
into his many dramas, seems, like his fellows,
to have rejected the chimeras so elaborately
asserted by the * black creeds ' which flourished
at the time, and hailed from c Lapland ' * and
Germany.

In the Tempest, unicorns and the Arabian
phcenix are jestingly touched upon as delusions
born of the travellers' coloured tales.2 The lines
of the hand, the chiromantical signs, are scoffed
at by the clownish Launcelot Gobbo in the

1 Comedy of Errors, iv. iii. n. 2 Tempest, HI. Hi. 22.

P

226 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

Venetian comedy,1 while the interpretation of
dreams is brought in later as a laughable detail.2

When, again, Owen Glendower, boasting of
supernatural wiles, narrates how at his birth

' The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shaked like a coward,' 3

and how the heavens were all on fire. Hotspur's
blunt common-sense humorously suggests that the
earth shook to see the heavens on fire; and he
petulantly rails at the Welsh sorcerer's c skimble-
skamble ' tales,

* Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies,
And of a dragon and a finless fish,
A clip-winged griffin and a moulten raven.' 4

But the age was susceptible in no small degree to
omen. After a local murder the gossips would
recollect having heard ' lamenting in the air,
strange screams of death,' such as had racked the
ear before the murder of Duncan. They would
have noticed that times of national stress had been
duly heralded by portentous meteors, which did
* fright the fixed stars of heaven,' and by ' lean-
looked prophets/ who did ' whisper fearful
change.' 5

Legends would be jealously hoarded : how
Queen Eleanor had sunk at Charing Cross, and

1 Merchant of Venice, n.ii. 151. 2 Ibid., n. v. 18.

3 i Henry W., in. i. 17 ff. 4 Ibid., 150 ff.

6 Richard //., n. iv. u.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 227

had risen again at Q^ueenhithe ; x how the owl that
hooted was a baker's daughter who had churlishly
refused a loaf to the suffering Christ.2

By almanacs 3 they would think to * choose
good days and shun the critical/ To odd
numbers was attached a strange divinity.*
An image of wax melted before a fire would
bring slow sickness on the person represented ; 5
moles and harelips ° were * scars prodigious.'
There would be planets of good luck,7 and planets
adverse ;8 dancing'^stars,4' and stars that" "poured
downjplagues.10 Some wouToTrnaTEe guilty of their
disasters ( the sun, the moon, and the stars/ n as if
they were ^villains by necessity, fools by heavenly
compulsion, knaves, thieves and treachers by
spherical predominance.' But Shakespeare con-
demned all this as c the excellent foppery of the
world,' and Fletcher took up the same attitude
when one of his clowns, who stood in fear of a
conjurer and his whirlwinds, was urged by way of
comfort ' not to believe there is any fetch in
astrology.' 12

The people who were, however, wedded to the

1 Middleton, Witch, i. i. 2 Hamlet, iv. v. 41.

3 Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, I. ii. 154.

4 Merry Wives of Windsor, v. i. 4. 5 King John, V. iv. 23.

6 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, v. ii. 42.

7 Richard III., iv. iv. 403. 8 i Henry VI., i. i. 54.
9 Much Ado about Nothing, n. i. 328.

10 Lovers Labour V Lost, v. ii. 394.

11 King Lear i. ii. 121 ff. 12 Fair Maid of the Inn.

228 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

mysteries of astrology would also find an awfulness
surrounding witches and their craft. A book had
been written by Scott, c discovering ' witches, and
refuting their claims to supernatural power. But
its good sense was unheard in the general chorus
of superstition ; and in the year of the Armada
a bishop flattered the c craft ' by appealing against
its workers. In a subsequent crusade, seventy old
women were burnt, having been collected from
quite a small area ; and the age became more than
ever convinced that every beldam who did not
sleep at night was a hag in character and a witch
by profession. When James's bride met with
bad weather on her way to Scotland/ that mon-
arch unhesitatingly attributed it to the influence
of witches. Before he entered England he had
written a tract maintaining the reality of those
evil spirits ; 2 and after his accession to the English
throne, a statute was passed against their baneful
practices.3 { Blasted heaths ' and lonely dwellings
were generally supposed to be the abodes of these
malignant beings, while yew-trees and damp
churchyards were also among their favourite
haunts.4 The eerie creatures would love the
foul ' taking airs ' 5 of midnight ; would sail
in a sieve6 through blizzard and thunder, or
fondle their familiars, cats and toads, on windy

1 1589. 2 1599, Demonology. 3 1604.

4 Stephens, Essays, ii. 20. 6 King Lear, n. iv. 164.

8 Macbeth, I. iii. 8.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 229

moors. Their presence in such places was often
detected by terrified rustics on hearing ' the mew
of the brinded cat/ or ' the whine of the hedge-
hog/ l If they dwelt in low cottages, ' the
melancholy darkness would encourage the con-
jecture of infernals ' ; 2 they would mumble
wicked charms, and use spells and periapts.8
They could control the moon 4 and assume at will
the form of any animal, but always tailless.6 On
Christmas night, however, their malignity left
them,6 and all the hateful charms of even a
Sycorax were then of no avail. To conjurers were
attributed none of these malignant tendencies.
They would sit publicly within a circle,7 summon
up devils, and so prove their mastery over the
prince of that tribe. Witches, on the other hand,
were held to be his apprentices,8 the ready instru-
ments of his evil designs.

The devil was no mere product of the
fancy to the average Elizabethan. The ' lordly
monarch of the North/ 9 when he approached his
victim, was supposed to put on pleasing forms,
* to suggest at first with heavenly shows/ 10 or ' to
haunt with voice of the nightingale.' n But the

1 Macbeth, iv. i. i. 2 Stephens, Essays, ii. 20.

3 i Henry PI., V. iii. 2. * Tempest, v. i. 270.

5 Macbeth, i. iii. 9. 6 Cf. Hamlet, i. i. 160 ff.

7 Beaumont and Fletcher, Woman Hater, v. v. ; also Richard III.,
I. ii. 34.

8 Fair Maid of the Inn, n.i. ; iv. ii. 9 i Henry VL, v. iii. 5.
10 Othello, n. iii. 349. u King Lear, in. vi. 30.

230 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

credulous usually associated him with the person
of a negro, or else of a Moor, for he was known
to have assumed such shapes. He had £ cloven
feet, black saucer eyes, and nostrils breathing
fire/ l when he appeared in his awfulness ; but
on occasion he could instil his poison as a
< black, ill-favoured fly.' 2 The £ Edgar ' of King
Lear, with the demons which possess him, is
merely a reproduction of a contemporary case of
possession by the devil — one Richard Mainey,
whose madness was dissected and described in
detail by a learned cleric, called Harsnett, of the
time. The poet's commentary on demonology
here, however, is sufficiently plain. His treat-
ment must have caused more than one credulous
being to doubt the beadle, and to wonder whether
every decrepit soul given to dreaming dreams was
indeed possessed, and whether they deserved the
ducking or the burning they received in conse-
quence. But a wretch within whom Satan was
thought to be housed might also be bound in
some dark room, and have the devil whipped outv
as Shakespeare's schoolmaster Pinch advised in an
early play.3 It was a senseless treatment for any
maniac ; but it illustrates the hold which the
ruthless creed of demonology possessed on the age.

1 Massinger, Christian Martyr , in. Hi.

2 Titus Andronicus, in. ii. 66.

3 Comedy of Errors, iv. iy. 945 cf. also As You Like It, in. v. 394.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 231

Other visitants from the spirit world with
whom the Elizabethans were familiar were the
ghosts, ' those extravagant and erring spirits,' l
who at times would revisit ' the glimpses of the
moon.' A ' spirit of health ' would appear with
charitable intention, and in his train would bring
' airs from heaven ' ; while a ' goblin damned '
would come with evil, breathing on mortals
' blasts from hell.' 2 Such ghosts were best defied
by Latin exorcisms ; but at the cock's warning of
the day's approach,3 when the glow-worm paled
his uneffectual fire,4 each restless spirit would
glide shrieking to the churchyard 5 from whence
it came. These would be the c mortified spirits,
doomed for a time to walk the night.' Other
spectral visions might be mere creatures of feverish
brains, embodied symbols of remorseful ambition
or criminal activity; and when Shakespeare dis-
tinguishes between the two, as he does in Hamlet,
and elsewhere, he is no doubt following a dis-
tinction maintained in his day.

Ostensibly in search of communication with
the world of spirits were found the alchemists,
who had for their aim the conversion of baser
metals into gold and silver. Their frauds were
notoriously great, but the native credulity greater.

1 Hamlet, i. i. 155. 2 ibid., i. iv. 40.

3 Ibid., I. i. 150. 4 Ibid., i. v. 90.

5 Julius Casar, n. ii. 24.

232 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

The earliest of their kind were honest seekers
for supernatural lore, but the Elizabethan repre-
sentatives were knaves and rogues and successful
quacks. Lyly had exposed them in his Gallathea.
But their artifices were finally laid bare by the
remorseless Jonson in his play of the Alchemist.
They would cozen with ' hollow coles and dust
scrapings/ and search for things lost with a sieve
and shears. They would impose on the simple
with their beech-coal and corsive waters, their
crosslets and crucibles, their retorts and receivers,
their pelicans and bolt-heads.1 These would be
their apparatus, and their operations would be
conducted with a suggestive secrecy, and their
results related in a terrifying jargon.

But the superstition which swayed king and
peasant alike could also take attractive forms.
The simple minds which recoiled before devil-
lore and black magic could people their meadows
and forests with fairies and elves, or indulge their
fancies in that folklore which bound, and still
binds, the past with the present. Every country-
side would have its poetic myths, fancy- born and
harmless, with which to enliven their many meetings
and to invest with significance the common things
of life. The toad would have a precious jewel 2
which would guard against poison ; the purple

1 Jonson, Alchemist, I. i. j IV. iii., etc.

2 As You Like It, n. i. 13.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 233

flower, love-in-idleness,1 would have love in its
gift ; the turquoise 2 faded or brightened with
the health of its wearer ; the ruddock 3 with
charitable bill would strew graves with flowers ;
the knot-grass 4 would hinder human growth ; the
fern-seed 5 was a herb that would give invisibility ;
the eye of a cockatrice6 possessed death-darting
powers ; the mandrake's groan 7 was ever a sign
of death; while the chameleon8 was an animal
that lived on air.

But the innate poetry, as well as the majesty
and youthfulness of the Elizabethan mind, is
nowhere more gloriously revealed than in its
conception of that moonlit music-haunted world
where fairies move ; those banks they still trip
along,

1 Where the wild thyme blows,
Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows ;
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine.'9

There were black fairies and grey fairies, fairies
green and fairies white,10 * elves of hills, brooks,

1 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, n. ii. 169.

2 Cf. Ben Jonson, Sejanus; and Merchant of Venice, in. i. 125.

3 Cymbeline, iv. ii. 224.

4 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, in. ii. 329.

5 i Henry 17., n. i. 93. 6 Romeo and Juliet, in. ii. 47.
7 2 Henry VL, in. ii. 310. 8 Hamlet, HI. ii. 95.

9 Midsummer Night's Dream, n. ii. 190.

10 Merry Wives of Windsor, v. v. 41.

234 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

standing lakes, and groves/ 1 who would fly under
the moon's cold light

' Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire/ 2

to keep their revel in the fairy ring, with other
4 moonshine revellers ' who hailed from far-off
green or fountain clear. Queen Mab3 would
be there — she who c plats the manes of horses
in the night/ No bigger than an agate stone,
she would be drawn with her * team of little
atomies/ Her 'waggoner' would be a small
grey-coated gnat, her chariot an empty hazel-
nut. She would come from driving through
lovers' brains to give them dreams of love ; or
over courtiers' knees to make them dream of
curtsies. Did she tickle a parson's nose as
he lay asleep, he, good man, would straight-
way dream of benefices ; a soldier touched,
would dream of cutting foreign throats. Some
would come from golden sands where they, all
day, would chase c the ebbing Neptune ' with their
printless feet, and fly in turn with breathless haste
when he returned.4 Sea-nymphs, too, from ocean
depths, where they would hourly ring their
gloomy knells for those who had suffered a sea-

1 Tempest, v. i. 33. 2 Midsummer Night's Dream, n. i. 2 ff .

3 Romeo and Juliet^ i. iv. 50 ff. * Tempest^ V. i. 34.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 235

change.1 Puck would be there, fresh from
beguiling c the fat and bean-fed horse * 2 by
neighing like a foal, or from bobbing against a
gossip's lips as she drank from her evening bowl.
As Robin Goodfellow, he might have success-
fully frightened some village maids, and would
relate with mirth to night-tripping fairies — them-
selves guilty of changeling tricks3 — how he had
' bootless made the breathless housewife churn/ 2
or led astray c night wanderers.' 2 Amidst the
throng of elvish sprites would be goblins and
owls, who were best obeyed by simple mortals,
for they could ' suck out breath or pinch us
blue ' ; while some outside the ring would be
busily making c green-sour ringlets ' 4 which the
ewe could not bite ; and others planting midnight
mushrooms. The * joiner squirrel'5 would be
looking on ; and the old grub, c the fairies' coach-
maker,' would leave his work to taste society.
Within the ring the Fairy Queen would hold her
court attended by her pensioners, the ' cowslips
tall,' 6 and the tiny Pease-Blossom, Cobweb, Moth,
and Mustard-Seed. Her loyal subjects would
seek for dewdrops, then hang them as pearls on
every cowslip's ear. They would kill the cankers

1 Tempest, i. ii. 380. 2 Midsummer Night's Dream, n. i. 45.

3 Winter's Tale, in. iii. 119. 4 Tempest, v. i. 37.

5 Romeo and Juliet, i. iv. 69.

6 Midsummer Right's Dream, n. i. 10.

236 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

in the musk-rose buds, ' war with rear-mice,' and
with their leathern wings make coats for smaller
elves.1 For the queen's comfort they would keep
back ' the clamorous owl that nightly hoots,' and,
frightened themselves, would seek the acorns'
cups. The dawn would disperse them. ' Follow-
ing darkness like a dream ' they would hasten to
couch in cowslips' bells and wait once more for
the moon to call.

Such was the c Faerie' of Elizabethan England.
It was an age in which a ray of moonshine
was held to be a path along which delicate and
unsubstantial creatures were tripping their aerial
rounds. Just as a lurid glare was spread over
moor and glen by Celtic imagination, lighting up
witches and their magic, so over softer meadows
shone that faint afterglow of medieval Fairyland,
which daily fed the thoughts of peasants and the
pens of poets.

1 Midsummer Night's Dream, n. iii. 2 ff.

ENVOY

AN attempt has now been made to recall, from
materials of the drama, something of England's
aspect as Elizabeth and her successor knew it.

Allusions were found ranging from the monarch
on the throne to persons of low degree ; from
the proudest and most upright courtier to the
most evil notoriety ; from events of national
import to mere local incidents ; from international
politics to civic enactments.

But more important perhaps than all these
were those permanent details of the life of
that day which emerged, details connected with
types and classes, customs and manners, which
from their very nature fix the characteristics
of that age and furnish what is most stable
and essential.

The period from which these gleanings were
made embraced for the most part the reigns
of two monarchs, some seventy years in duration,
and nothing more has been attempted, up to the
present, than to draw in broad outline the general
characteristics of that period as a whole.

i87

23 8 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

It is, however, at once obvious that in so ex-
tended a period the national conditions were
continually undergoing slow changes, which
would not be without effect on the national
character and customs. And just as it has been
hitherto maintained that the features of the age
lie imprinted on the drama, so by further dis-
crimination it is possible to obtain from those
topical reflections a finer appreciation of the
national phases which began with Elizabeth and
ended with James.

In Marlowe and Shakespeare we see the Eng-
land of the latter half of the sixteenth century,
young and vigorous, budding with hope, uncor-
rupted by luxury, not yet enervated by licence.
Both dramatists reflect the high ideals which filled
the air, the anxiety to grapple with mighty pro-
blems, the longing to discover new worlds ; while
in Marlowe English contact with Germany is also
noticeable, inasmuch as he employs as one of his
c motives ' that compact with the devil, which
came with ' newes out of Germany.' In his c high
astounding terms ' Marlowe embodies the vigour
of his day, which made men push off from
Devonshire shores, or wander to the Low
Countries in search of blows. The ' pity and
terror ' of his Edward II. was only capable of
being produced in an age when the nerves were
highly strung, and when tragedy lay around.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 239

Shakespeare took up Marlowe's pen and
ranged still higher. He added fire to Marlowe's
fire, and finer and chivalrous shades to Mar-
lowe's heroics. The national worship of their
great Queen found a counterpart in his wonder-
ful picture-gallery of noble heroines. With
Lyly he occasionally reflected the contemporary
taste for euphuistic display, for Court pageantry
and masques. He but lightly touched Puritan
foibles, for they were to become more pro-
nounced when he was dreaming his romances.
Tobacco and its cult find no mention in his
pages, nor did he choose to dwell on the base
uses to which alchemy was growing, possibly
because these things attained to excess after he
had done with the world of comedy. Neither
was the great English middle class, which
was merging into being out of the wreck of
feudalism, of sufficient strength to win his atten-
tion. He saw but a cultured class, whom he
treated with dignity, and an uncultured rabble
which tickled his humour, when it did not arouse
his spleen. His atmosphere was pure. Evil was
discord, as far as he was concerned ; and his
plays, like the earlier part of his age, found
more charm in action and love than in gossip
and intrigue.

With Jonson, who may, perhaps, be taken as
representative of the earlier part of James's reign,

24o SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

the atmosphere changes. London had been
rapidly growing since Elizabeth's accession,
and the march from the country had become
more emphasised. Jonson's pictures are there-
fore more centralised. His main interest is
London — its haunts and its characters. His
great centre is ' Paul's/ with its gulls and its
cozeners ; and the country scenes and sea-
breezes of Shakespeare are entirely wanting.
The tension of the Armada year had lapsed
into humours and excesses, which increased in
absurdity day by day. The gallants who on
occasion would rouse Shakespeare's satire, and
the vulgar army of penniless rascals, became
more pronounced than ever in their respective
absurdities ; for the age provided less action
than formerly, and the mind grew vapid with
very inertia. The Puritans were more assertive,
more whining ; and as they grew in strength, so
did errors arise, and Jonson takes care to ex-
plain that the world was not always absent from
the Puritan fold. The chivalry of Elizabeth's
reign was waning already. It had been swallowed
up in the empty affectations of gallant and lady.
Affectation had also spread to city dames, to
increase the confusion ; and the return to
feminine deification was farther off than ever.

Tobacco had become the fashion, and al-
chemists were flourishing in roguery and deceit.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 241

Superstitions were still potent, and not the least
abuse in a credulous age was the new institu-
tion of ' lying news-offices/ The youthful
ebullitions, the hearty sincerity and breezy
action of an earlier day had given way to
studied manners and credulous fancies, which
were hard to check.

In Beaumont and Fletcher also the decline of
this period is clearly portrayed, for they drew
what was around them in all its frailty. ' They
seldom represent an honourable woman without
something of Dol Common in her/ for it was a
day when love-sick ladies would disguise as pages
in the trains of their loves. The Court of
James cared little for the dignity of woman.
There was a falseness and insincerity in the
relations between the sexes. It was, as the
drama reflects, an age of shameless intrigue.
Shakespearean virtues were entirely lost ; while
Jonsonian foibles were ever exaggerated. It
was, as a scholarly critic has described, { an age of
tyrants and their favourites ; of evil counsellors
and evil counsels ; of pandars and minions ; of
cloaked vices and bedizened grossness ; of blatant
theories and systems ; of the decay of principles
and beliefs.'1 '

Even the warlike ardour which had repelled
the Spanish was now a mere affectation. The

1 A. W. Ward, English Dramatic Literature, ii. p. 763.
Q

242 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

city train-bands were subject to hysterics, and old
soldiers were commonly known to be rogues
and knaves. The political embassies despatched
abroad were no more dignified in character, as
Middleton showed ; and the frank criticism of
the monarch, not only in foreign polity, but in
his cherished realm of Divine right, illustrates
that growing strength of the Commons, which in
a couple of decades was to revise the constitution
and modify the Government.

From this topical material can also be gathered
certain information which, though it may bear but
slightly on the age in general, possesses yet some
interest in an incidental way.

From the works of Shakespeare, although they
teem with allusions to professions and trades,
nothing can be gathered to settle definitely
the calling he must have followed at some
time in his career. The deductions which have
been made with a view to that discovery are so
very numerous and reasonable withal, that the
result is absurdity. For instance, the dramatist
seems as familiar with drugs and salves as if he
had spent years over Galen. But his law-terms
are equally bewildering in the accuracy of their
technicalities. In educational matters he seems
quite practical and speaks with authority ; while
he also makes a brave show of military detail.
So that, as leech or lawyer, usher or soldier, he

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 243

might reasonably be said to have passed some
period ; but he cannot be said with any certainty
to have been any single one. Others have tracked
him to a printing establishment on account of his
intelligence in typographical matters. But then
he may, with equal reason, have served as boat-
swain of the Tiger, trafficking between places like
London and Aleppo, so technical is his detail of
mariners' craft. Or he might have been a gentle
astringer in the falconry of some grandee, so close
is his acquaintance with hawks and their ways.
And so possibility follows possibility until a
library has been formed, devoted to this single
aspect of Shakespearean study ; a library afford-
ing with certainty but one conclusion, namely,
that no amount of acuteness will enable a
critic to lay a finger on any one profession and
say that that was the one for which Shakespeare
was intended or which he followed for any period
of his life.

After all, it seems dwarfing the genius of this
myriad-minded man to insist on the origin of
these various technicalities as being necessarily
personal experience and not observation. It is
more than probable that his encyclopaedic learning
was picked up o' nights in the snug crowded
rooms of the Mermaid or Boar's Head. For
there he must often have listened to the wrang-
ling of angry scriveners, the laments of practice-

244 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

seeking medicoes, and the swaggering tales of
high-booted swashbucklers, late returned from
Zutphen or from the high seas. With his power
of discriminating and then assimilating, he would
readily absorb the details of their prattle. He
would make their technicalities his own, whilst,,
seemingly, he was paying but a passing regard to
their flying and humorous sallies. The topical
matter in Shakespeare, then, can give no aid on
this question.

It can, on the other hand, afford some cor-
roboration of what has been fixed upon as the
probable chronological order of the Shakespearean
plays. It would have been better to have said
the absence of this topical matter corroborates
the sequence ; for it is a curious fact that, as the
dramatist advanced in life, he indulged less and
less in those allusions which have been charac-
terised as ' particular.' More curious still, in his
latest years, when the £ particular ' allusions have
almost entirely disappeared, even the c general '
ones, which give the Elizabethan colouring, grow
somewhat fainter. In this last period it would
seem as if the dramatist were attempting to attain
complete emancipation from the details of his age.
But that necessary remnant of the spirit of the
age which, it has been maintained^ is never absent
from the greatest work, this he could never
throw ofr*.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 245

In his early plays, allusions are plentiful to
country life and to life in the capital. The
personalities are drawn from the people who
surrounded him. Fresh from the glades of
Warwickshire the young writer's efforts breathe
of country lanes and forests, of yokels and vill-
age ' tharboroughs.' Dazzled by the brilliance
of great London he gives a few vigorous
sketches of conceited gallants1 from Whitehall
or Greenwich, and quibbling rogues spied
out in Bucklersbury.2 When he has drifted
further into the vortex of London, he illustrates
tavern life with its soldiering rascals like FalstafF
and Sir Toby Belch, and cony-catching rogues
like Nym and Bardolph. He sketches the
manors of Pickt-hatch 3 with their harlots, whose
cheeks were beautified ' with plastering art/ 4
the bawds with their wickedness always before
their eyes5 — most commonly on their middle
finger — their rings * a death's head or memento
mori.J 6

Then, when the poet had risen in life, come
his visions of stately houses, and he portrays as one
familiar at Windsor, at Hampton, or at None-
such. His scenes are then the Courts of kings

1 Valentine and Proteus. 2 Speed and Lance.

3 Merry Wives of Windsor , n. ii. 19.

4 Hamlet, in. i. 51. * Marston, Dutch Courtezan.
* i Henry IV. ^ ill. Hi. 35.

246 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

like Elsinore and Glamis Castle ; his converse is
of weightier mould, for he scorns the taffeta jests
of Osric, the ways of the courtier fop, and his
empty prattle about Barbary horses and French
rapiers. He reflects on past history and handles
life's problems. And later, ere he breaks his wand,
he gradually discards that worldly phantasmagoria,
and dreams awhile of fancy-land within that circle
where ' none durst walk but he.' The Tudor
framework on which his earlier characters were
formed is now laid aside. They are still Eliza-
bethan, but less distinctly so. It is as if his genius
had felt dwarfed and narrowed by the bonds which
tied him to the obvious realities of his age. So
that in his romances there are no chronicles of
fashion, no duels, no barbered gallants, no enfeebled
watchman nor baubled clowns. By this time too
the memories of the English Court and its page-
ants come but faintly ; they are now as distant
echoes.

Further material for another such rough chrono-
logical test is furnished by the topical matter
which deals with the gallant and his tricks of
conversation.

Shakespeare at first was himself attracted by
the general craze and the spruce charm of the
poetic diction of the hour. His early produc-
tions are therefore tainted with a certain euphuistic
glamour and they bristle with conceits. Their

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 247

person* are 'antic* weaklings, 'the pink of
courtesy/1 'the apes of form.'2 Loves Labour's
Lost is in fact a satire, among other things, on the
1 man of complements,' 3 the trim gallant full of
courtship and of state, ' who takes his oath upon
his lady's pantofles that all excellence in madams
does but zany hers.' 4 Even Biron, who stands
out in contrast to Boyet, has c a trick of the old
rage.' 5 In the Two Gentlemen of Verona there is
the same light banter which flies from Proteus to
Valentine, and from Valentine to Silvia. It is
clad in gallant phraseology, such as a frequenter
at the Palace or a member of the Inns of Court
would employ to dissolve my lady's riddles, to
pen a sonnet or an acrostic ; 6 and the poet seems
to love lingering with the extravagant lovers and
their juggling quips. With Mercutio, Benvolio,
and c the furious Tybalt ' in the greater Veronese
play, the poet discarded quibbles and silken
phrases to some extent. He indulges at
this period in images of the daring ' princox '
who would throw into a challenge all the grace
of a lover's declaration, would fight 'as you
sing prick-song,' and, wounded by some c foining

1 Romeo and Juliet, n. iv. 59.

2 Love's Labour 's Lost, v. ii. 325.

3 Ibid., i. i. 167.

4 Beaumont and Fletcher, Queen of Corinth, I. ii.

5 Love's Labour V Lost, v. ii. 416.

6 Cf. Beaumont and Fletcher, Elder Brother, in. v.

248 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

traverse/ ' not so deep as a well nor so wide as
a church door/ 1 would die with a last sarcasm
for the ' scrimers ' that fight by the book of
arithmetic.2 It is a less artificial diction, but one
still tainted by the frailties of the hour.

Then comes the Midsummer Nigkfs Dream
with the splendid and gracious aristocrat Theseus,
purged of all the foibles of the contemporary
gallants, replete with all that is graceful, delicate,
and pleasing. His noble thoughts are many, his
diction is refined, while his imagination is not
persistently occupied with efforts to dazzle by
embellished wit. Sir Walter Raleigh, who bowed
as he spread his gold-tinselled cloak for the royal
foot, was a Biron or a Mercutio. Theseus wooing
Hippolyta was an idealised Essex paying his court
to Lady Frances Sidney.

In later plays, however, the poet's attitude
towards these prevalent affectations takes a decided
change. He begins now to laugh at those who
* climb o'er the house to unlock the little gate.' 3
He ceases to approve or even to tolerate, and
becomes directly hostile. Benedick's quick wit
and < queasy stomach ' 4 can no longer endure the
idle nothings of a fashionable tongue. Jacques is
an exposure of the man who had travelled and

1 Romeo and Juliet, in. i. 100 ff. 2 Ibid., in. i. 107.

3 Lowe's Labour 'V Lost, I. i. 109.

4 Much Ado about Nothing, n. i. 399.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 249

was affected in his language by his journeyings.
From this time onwards in his plays the poet
either entirely ignores the play of words and
fantastic imagery, or else exemplifies them merely
for purposes of ridicule, just as Hamlet shows
a fine contempt for all the shrouded humour
of the courtiers of Elsinore.

But these topical allusions, in addition to being
useful as rough chronological tests, also possess
intrinsic merits which give them a claim to a
primary interest and render them objects which
repay their study.

They convey, of course, the externals of
Elizabethan • life — their fashions, their furniture,
their dress, and amusements. But they also
transport into our own times the wit, the love,
the passion, and the dreams of those who lived
then. These things are of interest, not to
historians merely, but to every thinking and
feeling being ' that hath kept watch o'er man's
mortality.' For the questions and the problems
which underlie those passions are yet the same
as those with which we ourselves are grappling.
Even the passing and empty foibles of those
courtiers around their Queen have a rich signi-
ficance. They state historical facts and give the
contemporary conditions. But they also do
more. They are like the surface of the sea
through which one must peer to behold the

250 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY

depths. And Elizabethan foibles are open avenues
to Elizabethan hearts. So that this topical ele-
ment can claim the double merit of shedding
light not only on the external, but also on the
internal side of Elizabethan life.

And yet the topical is a field of Shakespearean
study which has hitherto been most inadequately
worked. There is no little truth in the saying
that we admire by tradition. And when Ben
Jonson described Shakespeare as being cnot of
an age but for all time/1 he was unconsciously
setting the fashion for generations of criticism
which were to follow. The critics have never
ceased to reiterate the universality of his genius
and the universal application of his writings.
But they have with almost equal consistency
persisted in overlooking that side of Shakespeare's
works which links him to his age. It is as if
they had neglected the foundations on which that
very universality was built, the attainment of a
perfect harmony in subsidiary characteristics and
incidental details. So that it has almost come
about that they would have him stand as a
detached spirit, whom patriotism, on no very
clearly defined grounds, claims as an English-
man. So much has criticism confined its efforts
to expounding his universality that one would
almost incline to think that he must have come,

1 Underwoods, p. 12.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY 251

and written, and departed this life without taking
into himself anything of his surroundings, or
breathing for a moment the Elizabethan atmo-
sphere. And yet his very universality arises out
of the virtue and the accuracy of these his topical
allusions. He is true to all ages because he is
true to one. And his greatness is perhaps but
inadequately grasped until the details of Eliza-
bethan life which exist in his dramas have been
fully explored and appreciated.

Shakespeare discharged what Goethe held to be
the function of the ideal poet1 when he took up
into his being the inharmonious facts of Nature
and his age, and gave them forth in harmonious
form. The world, and even Nature, is often
monotonous, and sometimes discordant. But
Shakespeare imparted to the whole a rhythmic
movement and made them live. And this he
did not without the aid of the topical device.

1 Cf. Goethe, Faust, 11. 140-149.

OF THF

UNIVERSITY

OF

Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press

Telegrams : 41 and 43 Maddox Street,

1 Scholarly, London.' Bond Street, London, W.,

March, 1906.

Mr. Edward Arnold's

List of New Books.

A STAFF OFFICER'S SCRAP-BOOK.

By LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON, K.C.B.

Demy 8vo. With Illustrations, Maps, and Plans.
i8s. net.

General Sir Ian Hamilton's story of the operations of the
Japanese First Army, under Marshal Kuroki, at which he was
present as British Attache, is generally recognised as the best
and most authoritative account accessible to English readers.

The Seventh Thousand is being rapidly exhausted — a remark-
able testimony to the welcome accorded to this fascinating
work, which is described by The Times as by far the most inter-
esting book on the Russo-Japanese War that has yet appeared
from the pen of an eye-witness.

LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W.

2 Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books

SOME DOGMAS OF RELIGION.

By JOHN ELLIS McTAGGART, Litt.D.,

LECTURER IN MORAL SCIENCES, TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

Demy Svo. IDS. 6d. net.

This book attempts to prove, in the first place, that beliefs as to
certain matters of fact beyond our empirical experience are essen-
tial for religion, and of fundamental importance for human life.
Secondly, it is maintained that such beliefs cannot legitimately rest
on faith, but only on argument. Reasons are then given for thinking
that the ordinary objections to the belief in human immortality are
fallacious. It is suggested that the most reasonable form for the
doctrine of immortality to take is one which makes each person to
have existed for many years before the existence of his present body,
and perhaps for all past time. A chapter on Free- Will endeavours
to show that Determinism must be accepted, and that its acceptance
would have no bad effects on morality.

THE
CHURCH AND COMMONWEALTH.

Ube Visitation Cbarges of tbe 1Ri0bt IRev. Oeorge IRtoDing, 2>.2>.,
ffirst Sisbop of Soutbwell.

Collected and Edited by his Wife, Lady LAURA RIDDING.
Demy 8vo. los. 6d, net.

For some time before his death the late Bishop of Southwell had
intended to republish in a collected form his Visitation Charges to
his Diocese. These Charges are five in number, the last of them,
which was to have been delivered at the Synod summoned to meet
at Southwell on June 30, 1904, being in the unfinished state in which
the Bishop's final illness found it. In preparing them for the press,
Lady Laura Ridding has omitted those passages which are of purely
local, or of temporary, though public, interest, but in other respects
the Charges appear in their original form, and constitute a valuable
body of teaching on many of the great Church questions of the day.
There is a full synopsis of the subject-matter, which enables the
reader to see at a glance the points dealt with under such main
headings as The Holy Communion, The Law of the Church,
Education, etc.

Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books 3

THROUGH INDIA WITH
THE PRINCE.

By G. F. ABBOTT,

KNIGHT COMMANDER OF THE HELLENIC ORDER OF THE SAVIOUR ;
AUTHOR OF 'SONGS OF MODERN GREECE,' 'THE TALE OF A TOUR IN MACEDONIA,' ETC.

Demy 8vo. With Illustrations.

Mr. Abbott, whose graphic and amusing description of his last
visit to Macedonia will be well remembered, is at present accom-
panying Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales
on their Indian tour as special correspondent of the Calcutta
Statesman. His tale of this tour possesses a characteristic which
will probably distinguish it from other versions — he attaches
far more importance to the real condition of the various peoples
visited than to the external display made by their rulers. This does
not mean that Mr. Abbott fails to describe adequately durbars and
similar ceremonies. On the contrary, his descriptions of these
incidents are as vivid and convincing as ever. But he does not
allow his attention to be distracted by them from the more serious
problems of British rule in India, and his record of the Royal
progress will possess a more permanent value on that account.

CONCERNING PAUL AND
FIAMMETTA.

By L. ALLEN HARKER,

AUTHOR OF 'THE INTERVENTION OF THE DUKE,' (WKE FOLK, GOOD FOLK,' 'A ROMANCE
OF THE NURSERY,' ETC.

With a Preface by KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN.
Crown 8vo. 55.

This is a charming book of the same kind as Mr. Kenneth
Grahame's ' Golden Age ' — a book about children for grown-ups.
There are five children, including Fiammetta, full of quaint fancies
and amusing pranks — an entirely lovable little party, with delightful
dogs and a very characteristic Aunt Eunice.

4 Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books

SURGICAL NURSING

Bnt> tbe {principles of Surgerg for flurses.
By RUSSELL HOWARD, M.B., M.S., F.R.C.S.,

LECTURER ON SURGICAL NURSING TO THE PROBATIONERS OF THE LONDON HOSPITAL : SURGEON

TO OUT-PATIENTS, ROYAL WATERLOO HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN AND WOMEN

SURGICAL REGISTRAR, LONDON HOSPITAL.

Crown Svo. With Illustrations. 6s.

This is an exceedingly lucid and comprehensive handbook on the
subject, and contains all the most approved methods very clearly
arranged.

THE LAWS OF HEALTH.

By D. NABARRO, M.D., B.Sc., D.P.H.,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PATHOLOGY AND BACTERIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.

Crown 8vo. With Illustrations, is. 6d.

This volume takes the form of a very simply-written primer of
health, in which the direct application of the science of physiology
to every-day life is shown, while care is taken to avoid technical
terms whenever possible. The author's chief aim is to give such
explicit directions as will, if acted upon, help the reader to develop
a sound mind in a sound body, and, at the same time, to demonstrate
in a simple manner why each rule or warning is given. He also
shows in almost every chapter the effect on the tissues and nervous
system of a misuse of alcoholic drink and tobacco.

NEW AND REVISED EDITION.

FOOD AND THE PRINCIPLES OF
DIETETICS.

By ROBERT HUTCHISON, M.D. EDIN., F.R.C.P.,

ASSISTANT PHYSICIAN TO THE LONDON HOSPITAL AND TO THE HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN,

GREAT ORMOND STREET.

Demy 8vo. With 3 Plates in colour and numerous Illustrations in
the text. 1 6s. net, cloth ; 155. net, paper.

This important work, the first edition of which was described by
the Guardian as ' one of the most enthralling books ever published
on the subject/ has been thoroughly revised by the author in the
light of the experience of recent years, and is now absolutely up to
date.

Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books 5

THE AENEID OF VIRGIL.

With a Translation by CHARLES J. BILLSON, M.A.,

CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD.

2 vols. Crown $to. 308. net.

These handsome volumes, which are printed in old-style English
type on a deckle-edged antique paper, and are bound in drab holland
with paper label on the back, contain on the left-hand page a text
based on Conington's, and on the right a line-for-line translation in
blank verse.

THE ROMANCE OF EMPIRE.

By PHILIP GIBBS,

AUTHOR OF ' FACTS AND IDEAS,' ' KNOWLEDGE is POWER," ETC.

Crown Svo. With Illustrations. 6s.

In this book Mr. Gibbs tells, in his characteristically interesting
style, the story of the expansion of Britain, beginning shortly before
the time of Elizabeth, and bringing the account down almost to the
present day. Each great division of our Empire beyond the seas is
dealt with in turn, and without any sacrifice of historical accuracy
or proportion the author gives to his narrative the attractiveness of a
well-told romance.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY.

a StuDB of tbe tropical Blement in Sbafceepeare ant) in tbe
;£lf3abetban Drama.

By J. A. DE ROTHSCHILD,

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

Crown Svo. 55. net.

This work was originally written as the Harness Prize Essay of
1901. The author, considering that no field could offer a wealthier
fund of Elizabethan remains than the contemporary dramas, has
devoted himself almost entirely to the drama as a source of infor-
mation, although contributions have occasionally been levied on
pamphlets and other writings. The Elizabethan background which
is evolved as contemporary allusions are massed together is an
achievement equally useful and interesting to the lover of the
literature of the period.

6 Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books

VALVES AND VALVE GEAR
MECHANISMS.

By W. E. DALBY, M.A., B.Sc., M.lNST.C.E., M.I.M.E.,

PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING, CITY AND GUILDS OF LONDON* CENTRAL TECHNICAL COLLEGE.

Royal 8vo. With numerous Illustrations. 2 is. net, cloth ;
2os. net, paper.

Valve gears are considered in this book from two points of view,
namely, the analysis of what a given gear can do, and the design of
a gear to effect a stated distribution of steam. The gears analyzed
are for the most part those belonging to existing and well-known
types of engines, and include, amongst others, a link motion of the
Great Eastern Railway, the straight link motion of the London and
North-Western Railway, the Walschaert gear of the Northern of
France Railway, the Joy gear of the Lancashire and Yorkshire
Railway, the Sulzer gear, the Meyer gear, etc. A chapter is added
on the inertia stresses in the links of a valve gear, and an actual
example of the inertia loading of a Joy gear is fully discussed.

A MANUAL OF PHARMACOLOGY.

By WALTER E. DIXON, M.A., M.D., B.Sc. LOND.,
D.P.H. CAMB.,

ASSISTANT TO THE DOWNING PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE,
EXAMINER IN PHARMACOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITIES OF CAMBRIDGE AND GLASGOW.

Demy Svo. 155. net, cloth; 145. net, paper.

This text-book, which is prepared especially for the use of students,
gives a concise account of the physiological action of Pharmacopoeial
drugs. The subject is treated from the experimental standpoint,
and the drugs are classified into pharmacological groups. The text
is fully illustrated by original tracings of actual experiments and by
diagrams.

The author's aim throughout has been to cultivate the reasoning
faculties of the student and to subject all statements to experiment,
in the hope that pharmacology may thus be learnt like any other
science, and consist in something more than the mere committal to
memory of many disjointed and often unassociated facts, as it has
been too often in the past.

Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books 7

RACES OF DOMESTIC POULTRY.

By EDWARD BROWN, F.L.S.,

SECRETARY OF THE NATIONAL POULTRY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY;

AUTHOR OF 'POULTRY KEEPING: AN INDUSTRY FOR FARMERS AND COTTAGERS,' 'INDUSTRIAL
POULTRY KEEPING,' ' PLEASURABLE POULTRY KEEPING,' ETC.

Crown $0. With Illustrations. 6s. net.

This important and comprehensive work, by an admitted master
of his subject, will be welcomed by all who are interested in poultry-
keeping. Chapters I. and II. deal with the origin, history, and
distribution of domestic poultry, and with the evolution and classi-
fication of breeds ; the next ten chapters are devoted to the various
races of fowls ; Chapters XIII. to XV. treat of ducks, geese, and
turkeys. The remaining chapters are on external characters and
breeding. There are also Appendices on Nomenclature, Judging, etc.

A FISHING CATECHISM

AND

A SHOOTING CATECHISM.

By COLONEL R. F. MEYSEY-THOMPSON,

AUTHOR OF ' REMINISCENCES OF THE COURSE, THE CAMP, AND THE CHASE.'

Two volumes. Foolscap 8vo. 35. 6d. net each.

Lovers of rod and gun will welcome these valuable handbooks
from the pen of an admitted expert. The information given is abso-
lutely practical, and is conveyed, for the most part, in the form of
Question and Answer. As the result of some fifty years' experience,
the author seems to have anticipated every possible emergency, and
the arrangement is especially calculated to facilitate easy reference.
There are special chapters on fishing and shooting etiquette, and at
the end of each book is a chapter dealing with the legal side of the
subject.

4 The questions are direct, and the answers equally direct ; it is difficult to
think of other questions which might have been put, so wide is the range covered
by query and reply; and, last and best recommendation of all for a book of this
kind, Colonel Meysey-Thompson recognises that no question must be ruled out
as too easy, or as being one of the things that every duffer knows.' — County
Gentleman.

' The whole handy, well-printed book is as full of information of the right
sort as an egg is of meat. It will delight alike the tyro and the expert, which no
book can do that is not thoroughly good.' — Sportsman.

8 Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books

RECENT ADVANCES IN PHYSIOLOGY
AND BIO-CHEMISTRY.

CONTRIBUTORS '.

BENJAMIN MOORE, M.A., D.Sc.,

JOHNSTON PROFESSOR OF BIO-CHEMISTRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL.

LEONARD HILL, M.B., F.R.S.,

LECTURER ON PHYSIOLOGY, THE LONDON HOSPITAL.

J. J. R. MACLEOD, M.B.,

PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY, CLEVELAND, U.S.A.
LATE DEMONSTRATOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, THE LONDON HOSPITAL.

M. S. PEMBREY, M.A., M.D.,

LECTURER ON PHYSIOLOGY, GUY'S HOSPITAL.

A. P. BEDDARD, M.A., M.D.,

ASSISTANT PHYSICIAN, LATE DEMONSTRATOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, GUY'S HOSPITAL.

752 p&ges. Demy 8vo. iSs. net, cloth; 175. net, paper.

This book, which is edited by Mr. Leonard Hill, consists of Lec-
tures on Physiological subjects selected for their direct clinical
interest, and designed to meet the requirements of advanced students
of Physiology. Professor Moore deals with Vital Energy, Ferments,
and Glandular Mechanisms ; Mr. Hill himself with the Atmosphere
in its Relation to Life, the Metabolism of Water and Inorganic Salts,
and the Metabolism of Fat; Professor Macleod with the Metabolism
of the Carbohydrates, and of Uric Acid and the other Purin Bodies,
and with Haemolysis ; Dr. Pembrey with the Respiratory Ex-
change and Internal Secretion ; and Dr. Beddard with Lymph,
Absorption, and the Secretion of Urine.

NEW EDITION.

PRACTICAL PHYSIOLOGY.

By A. P. BEDDARD, M.A., M.D., J. S. EDKINS, M.A., M.B.,

L. HILL, M.B., F.R.S., J. J. R. MACLEOD, M.B., AND M. S.

PEMBREY, M.A., M.D.

Demy 8vo. Copiously illustrated. I2S. 6d. net, cloth ;
us. 6d. net, paper.

Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books

NEW FICTION.

Crown 8vo. 6s. each.

SECOND IMPRESSION.

THE LADY OF THE WELL.

By ELEANOR ALEXANDER,

AUTHOR OF 'LADY ANNE'S WALK,' 'THE RAMBLING RECTOR.'

HYACINTH.

By GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM,

AUTHOR OF 'THE SEETHING POT.'

FOLLY.

By EDITH RICKERT,

AUTHOR OF 'THE REAI-EK.'

SECOND IMPRESSION.

THE HOUSE OF SHADOWS.

By REGINALD J. FARRER,

AUTHOR OF 'THE GARDEN OF ASIA.'

THIRD IMPRESSION.

THE PROFESSOR'S LEGACY.

By MRS. ALFRED SIDGWICK,

AUTHOR OF ' CYNTHIA'S WAY,' ' THE BERYL STONES,' ETC.

A TROMBONE AND A STAR.

By C. T. PODMORE,

AUTHOR OF 'A CYNIC'S CONSCIENCE.'

A FLOOD TIDE.

By MARY A. DEBENHAM.

THE BROWN HOUSE and CORDELIA.

By MARGARET BOOTH.

io Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books

THREE LITTLE COOKS.

By LUCY CRUMP.
Square crown Svo. With Illustrations by Gertrude M. Bradley. 25. 6d.

1 No child who owns one of those precious possessions — a miniature cooking
stove — should be without this book. It contains many good recipes, adapted to
the conditions of a toy stove, and also much good advice, which may be followed
with advantage by those boys and girls who play at being cooks.' — ChurchTimes.

POLITICAL CARICATURES, 1905.

By F. CARRUTHERS GOULD.
Super royal 4*0. 6s. net.

NEW AND CHEAPER EDITIONS.

THE REMINISCENCES OF SIR
HENRY HAWKINS

CfiSaron ^Brampton).
Edited by RICHARD HARRIS, K.C.,

AUTHOR OF 'ILLUSTRATIONS OF ADVOCACY," 'AULD ACQUAINTANCE,' ETC.

Crown Svo. With Portrait. 6s.

In this edition a few of the more technically legal passages have
been omitted, but all the dramatic episodes and characteristic anec-
dotes remain untouched.

RED POTTAGE.

By MARY CHOLMONDELEY.

Crown Svo. 2s. 6d.

Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books n

ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES ON
ECONOMIC QUESTIONS (1865-1893).

WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTES (1905).

By the RIGHT HON. VISCOUNT GOSCHEN.

Demy Svo. 155. net.

' One of those rare and desirable works — an economic treatise based on
practical and personal experience, and at the same time interesting and
readable. ' — Manchester Guardian.

' It is written in graphic and incisive language. Its qualities will, we are
convinced, appeal to many readers who would be deterred from studying more
formal and elaborate treatises, for they will find here complicated facts set forth
with great lucidity and directness. . . . They will feel that they are throughout
in close contact with the real circumstances of the actual situation.'— -Economic
Journal.

FINAL RECOLLECTIONS OF A
DIPLOMATIST.

By the RIGHT HON. SIR HORACE RUMBOLD, BART.,
G.C.B., G.C.M.G.,

AUTHOR OF ' RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST ' AND ' FURTHER RECOLLECTIONS
OF A DIPLOMATIST.'

Demy Svo. 155. net, cloth ; 145. net, paper.

' He appears to have met and known every remarkable man and woman of
his time who was to be met with in Europe. This last volume is, indeed, like its
predecessors, a thoroughly fascinating study.' — Daily Chronicle.

LORD HOBHOUSE:

A MEMOIR.

By L. T. HOBHOUSE, and J. L. HAMMOND,

AUTHOR OF 'MIND IN EVOLUTION.' AUTHOR OF 'C. J. Fox: A STUDY.'

Demy Svo. With Portraits. 125. 6d. net.

' No more conscientious public servant than the late Lord Hobhouse ever
existed, and it is only right that the community on whose behalf he spent
laborious days should be able to appreciate his full worth. That end will be
agreeably accomplished by the readers of this compact and eloquent memoir. ' —

A tli en awn.

12 Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books

THE LIFE OF JOHANNES BRAHMS.

By FLORENCE MAY.

Two volumes. Demy 8vo. With Illustrations. 2 is. net, cloth;
2os. net, paper.

' There have been many valuable contributions to Brahms literature, but none
that has yet appeared is of equal importance with Miss May's volumes.' — The
Times.

' Quite the most complete and comprehensive life of the master which has so
far been produced in this country.' — Westminster Gazette.

' Bids fair to remain for many years to come the standard biography in the
English language.' — Yorkshire Post.

A FORGOTTEN JOHN RUSSELL.

Meim Xetters to a fl&an ot ^Business, 1724*1751.

Arranged by MARY EYRE MATCHAM.

Demy 8vo. With Portrait. 125. 6d. net.

1 A vivacious picture of society, mainly naval, in the reign of the second
George. John Russell appears to have been a distant connection of the Bedford
family. . . . Miss Matcham is to be congratulated on her judicious editing of
this fresh and pleasant volume. Her John Russell has been most tactfully rescued
from oblivion.' — Athenaum.

THEODORE OF STUDIUM :

HIS LIFE AND TIMES.

By ALICE GARDNER,

ASSOCIATE AND LECTURER OF NEWNHAM COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ;

AUTHOR OF 'JULIAN THE PHILOSOPHER,' 'STUDIES IN JOHN THE SCOT,' 'ROME THE MIDDLE

OF THE WORLD,' ETC.

Demy Svo. With Illustrations. los. 6d. net.

Miss Gardner shows, as she has done before, a fondness for the byways of
ecclesiastical history. She has now taken as the subject of a careful study
Theodore, who became Abbot of the Monastery of Studium, in Constantinople,
towards the end of the eighth century. . . . The author writes without any
ecclesiastical bias in one direction or the other, doing ^ full justice to Theodore's
nobler qualities, but not concealing or minimizing his faults. The volume is
illustrated by some excellent photographs.' — Glasgoiv Herald.

Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books 13

THE GREAT PLATEAU.

an account of Exploration in Central aibet, 1903, anfc of tbe

(Bartofc Bjpemtfon, 1904=1905.
By CAPTAIN C. G. RAWLING,

SOMERSETSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY.

Demy Svo. With Illustrations and Maps. 155. net, cloth;
145. net, paper.

' Of exceptional value as a record of travel, and its interest is enhanced by
an admirable map and many exceedingly fine illustrations.'— Standard.

IN THE DESERT.

By L. MARCH PHILLIPPS,

AUTHOR OF ' WITH RIMINGTON.'

Demy Svo. With Illustrations. 125. 6d. net, cloth;
us. 6d. net, paper.

1 A very fine book, of great interest and fascination, that is difficult to lay aside
until read at a sitting.'— World.

1 There are many that go to the desert, but few are chosen. Mr. March
Phillipps is one of the few. He sees, and can tell us what he has seen, and,
reading him, we look through his eyes and his sympathies are ours.'— The Times'.

TWO YEARS IN THE ANTARCTIC.

a Narrative of tbe JSritfsb National Antarctic BspeDttiom
By LIEUTENANT ALBERT B. ARMITAGE, R.N.R.,

SECOND IN COMMAND OF THE 'DISCOVERY,' 1901-1904; AND OF THE JACKSCN-HARMSWORTH
POLAR EXPEDITION, 1894-1897.

Demy Svo. With Illustrations and Map. 155. net, cloth ;
145. net, paper.

•A most entertaining work, written in a plain, straightforward style which
at once appeals to the reader. It is very nicely illustrated and furnished with an
excellent map.' — Field.

1 6 Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books

NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED.

COMMON-SENSE COOKERY.

ffot Bnglfsb Ibousebol&s, witb awentg dftenus worfcefc out in 2>etafU

By COLONEL A. KENNEY-HERBERT,

AUTHOR OF ' FIFTY BREAKFASTS,' ' FIFTY LUNCHES,' ' FIFTY DINNERS," ETC.

Large crown Svo. With Illustrations. 6s. net.

The author has so largely rewritten this edition that it is prac-
tically a new book. Besides being brought up to date with the
very latest ideas on the subject, it is much enlarged, and now
contains a number of attractive full-page illustrations.

CHEAPER EDITION.

PEN AND PENCIL SKETCHES OF SHIPPING AND
CRAFT ALL ROUND THE WORLD.

By R. T. PRITCHETT.
Demy Svo. With 50 full-page Illustrations. 35. 6d.

ILLUSTRATED EDITION.

HISTORICAL TALES FROM

SHAKESPEARE. I

By A. T. QUILLER-COUCH ('Q.'),

AUTHOR OF 'THE SHIP OF STARS,' ETC.

Crown Svo. With Illustrations from the Boy dell Gallery. 6s.

The value of this much-appreciated work will, it is believed, be
enhanced by the addition of sixteen selected illustrations from the
well-known Boydell collection.

LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W,

OF THE

UNIVERSI

OF

?x

Y

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.

NOV 3 1947

,270et'59Mj

JAN I 5 19GG G 8
REC'D LD

JMI21'66-'

LD 21-100m-12,'46(A2012sl6)4120

1 400