The Complete Essays of Charles Dudley Warner Part 29

The ladies of the court, handsome and well shaped, followed, dressed for the most part in white; and on either side she was guarded by fifty gentlemen pensioners with gilt battle-axes. In the ante-chapel, where she graciously received pet.i.tions, there was an acclaim of "Long live Queen Elizabeth!" to which she answered, "I thank you, my good people." The music in the chapel was excellent, and the whole service was over in half an hour. This is Hentzner's description of the setting out of her table:

"A gentleman entered the room bearing a rod, and along with him another who had a table-cloth, which, after they had both kneeled three times, he spread upon the table; and after kneeling again they both retired. Then came two others, one with the rod again, the other with a salt-cellar, a plate, and bread; and when they had kneeled as the others had done, and placed what was brought upon the table, they two retired with the same ceremonies performed by the first. At last came an unmarried lady (we were told she was a countess) and along with her a married one, bearing a tasting-knife; the former was dressed in white silk, who, when she had prostrated herself three times, in the most graceful manner approached the table, and rubbed the plates with bread and salt, with as much awe as if the Queen had been present. When they had waited there a little while the Yeomen of the Guard entered, bare-headed, clothed in scarlet, with a golden rose upon their backs, bringing in at each turn a course of twenty-four dishes, served in plate, most of it gilt; these dishes were received by a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placed upon the table, while the Lady Taster gave to each of the guard a mouthful to eat, of the particular dish he had brought, for fear of, any poison. During the time that this guard, which consists of the tallest and stoutest men that can be found in all England, being carefully selected for this service, were bringing dinner, twelve trumpets and two kettle-drums made the hall ring for half an hour together. At the end of all this ceremonial, a number of unmarried ladies appeared, who with particular solemnity lifted the meat off the table and conveyed it into the Queen's inner and more private chamber, where, after she had chosen for herself, the rest goes to the Ladies of the court."

The queen dined and supped alone, with very few attendants.

II

We now approach perhaps the most important matter in this world, namely, dress. In nothing were the increasing wealth and extravagance of the period more shown than in apparel. And in it we are able to study the origin of the present English taste for the juxtaposition of striking and uncomplementary colors. In Coryat's "Crudities," 1611, we have an Englishman's contrast of the dress of the Venetians and the English. The Venetians adhered, without change, to their decent fas.h.i.+on, a thousand years old, wearing usually black: the slender doublet made close to the body, without much quilting; the long hose plain, the jerkin also black--but all of the most costly stuffs Christendom can furnish, satin and taffetas, garnished with the best lace. Gravity and good taste characterized their apparel. "In both these things," says Coryat, "they differ much from us Englishmen. For whereas they have but one color, we use many more than are in the rainbow, all the most light, garish, and unseemly colors that are in the world. Also for fas.h.i.+on we are much inferior to them. For we wear more fantastical fas.h.i.+ons than any nation under the sun doth, the French only excepted." On festival days, in processions, the senators wore crimson damask gowns, with flaps of crimson velvet cast over their left shoulders; and the Venetian knights differed from the other gentlemen, for under their black damask gowns, with long sleeves, they wore red apparel, red silk stockings, and red pantofles.

Andrew Boord, in 1547, attempting to describe the fas.h.i.+ons of his countrymen, gave up the effort in sheer despair over the variety and fickleness of costume, and drew a naked man with a pair of shears in one hand and a piece of cloth in the other, to the end that he should shape his apparel as he himself liked; and this he called an Englishman. Even the gentle Harrison, who gives Boord the too harsh character of a lewd popish hypocrite and ungracious priest, admits that he was not void of judgment in this; and he finds it easier to inveigh against the enormity, the fickleness, and the fantasticality of the English attire than to describe it. So unstable is the fas.h.i.+on, he says, that today the Spanish guise is in favor; tomorrow the French toys are most fine and delectable; then the high German apparel is the go; next the Turkish manner is best liked, the Morisco gowns, the Barbary sleeves, and the short French breeches; in a word, "except it were a dog in a doublet, you shall not see any so disguised as are my countrymen in England."

This fantastical folly was in all degrees, from the courtier down to the tarter. "It is a world to see the costliness and the curiosity, the excess and the vanity, the pomp and the bravery, the change and the variety, and finally the fickleness and the folly that is in all degrees; insomuch that nothing is more constant in England than inconstancy of attire. So much cost upon the body, so little upon souls; how many suits of apparel hath the one, or how little furniture hath the other!" "And how men and women worry the poor tailors, with endless fittings and sending back of garments, and trying on!" "Then must the long seams of our hose be set with a plumb line, then we puff, then we blow, and finally sweat till we drop, that our clothes may stand well upon us."

The barbers were as cunning in variety as the tailors. Sometimes the head was polled; sometimes the hair was curled, and then suffered to grow long like a woman's locks, and many times cut off, above or under the ears, round as by a wooden dish. And so with the beards: some shaved from the chin, like the Turks; some cut short, like the beard of the Marquis Otto; some made round, like a rubbing-brush; some peaked, others grown long. If a man have a lean face, the Marquis Otto's cut makes it broad; if it be platterlike, the long, slender beard makes it seem narrow; "if he be weasel-beaked, then much hair left on the cheeks will make the owner look big like a bowdled hen, and so grim as a goose." Some courageous gentlemen wore in their ears rings of gold and stones, to improve G.o.d's work, which was otherwise set off by monstrous quilted and stuffed doublets, that puffed out the figure like a barrel.

There is some consolation, though I don't know why, in the knowledge that writers have always found fault with women's fas.h.i.+ons, as they do today.

Harrison says that the women do far exceed the lightness of the men; "such staring attire as in time past was supposed meet for light housewives only is now become an habit for chaste and sober matrons." And he knows not what to say of their doublets, with pendant pieces on the breast full of jags and cuts; their "galligascons," to make their dresses stand out plumb round; their farthingales and divers colored stockings.

"I have met," he says, "with some of these trulls in London so disguised that it hath pa.s.sed my skill to determine whether they were men or women." Of all cla.s.ses the merchants were most to be commended for rich but sober attire; "but the younger sort of their wives, both in attire and costly housekeeping, cannot tell when and how to make an end, as being women indeed in whom all kind of curiosity is to be found and seen." Elizabeth's time, like our own, was distinguished by new fas.h.i.+onable colors, among which are mentioned a queer greenish-yellow, a pease-porridge-tawny, a popinjay of blue, a l.u.s.ty gallant, and the "devil in the hedge." These may be favorites still, for aught I know.

Mr. Furnivall quotes a description of a costume of the period, from the ma.n.u.script of Orazio Busino's "Anglipotrida." Busino was the chaplain of Piero Contarina, the Venetian amba.s.sador to James I, in 1617. The chaplain was one day stunned with grief over the death of the butler of the emba.s.sy; and as the Italians sleep away grief, the French sing, the Germans drink, and the English go to plays to be rid of it, the Venetians, by advice, sought consolation at the Fortune Theatre; and there a trick was played upon old Busino, by placing him among a bevy of young women, while the concealed amba.s.sador and the secretary enjoyed the joke. "These theatres," says Busino, "are frequented by a number of respectable and handsome ladies, who come freely and seat themselves among the men without the slightest hesitation . . . . Scarcely was I seated ere a very elegant dame, but in a mask, came and placed herself beside me . . . . She asked me for my address both in French and English; and, on my turning a deaf ear, she determined to honor me by showing me some fine diamonds on her fingers, repeatedly taking off no fewer than three gloves, which were worn one over the other . . . . This lady's bodice was of yellow satin, richly embroidered, her petticoat--[It is a trifle in human progress, perhaps scarcely worth noting, that the "round gown," that is, an entire skirt, not open in front and parting to show the under petticoat, did not come into fas.h.i.+on till near the close of the eighteenth century.]--of gold tissue with stripes, her robe of red velvet with a raised pile, lined with yellow muslin with broad stripes of pure gold. She wore an ap.r.o.n of point lace of various patterns; her headtire was highly perfumed, and the collar of white satin beneath the delicately wrought ruff struck me as exceedingly pretty." It was quite in keeping with the manners of the day for a lady of rank to have lent herself to this hoax of the chaplain.

Van Meteren, a Netherlander, 1575, speaks also of the astonis.h.i.+ng change or changeableness in English fas.h.i.+ons, but says the women are well dressed and modest, and they go about the streets without any covering of mantle, hood, or veil; only the married women wear a hat in the street and in the house; the unmarried go without a hat; but ladies of distinction have lately learned to cover their faces with silken masks or vizards, and to wear feathers. The English, he notes, change their fas.h.i.+ons every year, and when they go abroad riding or traveling they don their best clothes, contrary to the practice of other nations. Another foreigner, Jacob Rathgeb, 1592, says the English go dressed in exceeding fine clothes, and some will even wear velvet in the street, when they have not at home perhaps a piece of dry bread. "The lords and pages of the royal court have a stately, n.o.ble air, but dress more after the French fas.h.i.+on, only they wear short cloaks and sometimes Spanish caps."

Harrison's arraignment of the English fas.h.i.+ons of his day may be considered as almost commendative beside the diatribes of the old Puritan Philip Stubbes, in "The Anatomie of Abuses," 1583. The English language is strained for words hot and rude enough to express his indignation, contempt, and fearful expectation of speedy judgments. The men escape his hands with scarcely less damage than the women. First he wreaks his indignation upon the divers kinds of hats, stuck full of feathers, of various colors, "ensigns of vanity," "fluttering sails and feathered flags of defiance to virtue"; then upon the monstrous ruffs that stand out a quarter of a yard from the neck. "As the devil, in the fullness of his malice, first invented these ruffs, so has he found out two stays to bear up this his great kingdom of ruffs--one is a kind of liquid matter they call starch; the other is a device made of wires, for an under-propper. Then there are s.h.i.+rts of cambric, holland, and lawn, wrought with fine needle-work of silk and curiously st.i.tched, costing sometimes as much as five pounds. Worse still are the monstrous doublets, reaching down to the middle of the thighs, so hard quilted, stuffed, bombasted, and sewed that the wearer can hardly stoop down in them. Below these are the gally-hose of silk, velvet, satin, and damask, reaching below the knees. So costly are these that now it is a small matter to bestow twenty n.o.bles, ten pound, twenty pound, fortie pound, yea a hundred pound of one pair of Breeches. (G.o.d be merciful unto us!) To these gay hose they add nether-socks, curiously knit with open seams down the leg, with quirks and clocks about the ankles, and sometimes interlaced with gold and silver thread as is wonderful to behold. Time has been when a man could clothe his whole body for the price of these nether-socks. Satan was further let loose in the land by reason of cork shoes and fine slippers, of all colors, carved, cut, and st.i.tched with silk, and laced on with gold and silver, which went flipping and flapping up and down in the dirt. The jerkins and cloaks are of all colors and fas.h.i.+ons; some short, reaching to the knee; others dragging on the ground; red, white, black, violet, yellow, guarded, laced, and faced; hanged with points and ta.s.sels of gold, silver, and silk. The hilts of daggers, rapiers, and swords are gilt thrice over, and have scabbards of velvet. And all this while the poor lie in London streets upon pallets of straw, or else in the mire and dirt, and die like dogs!"

Stubbes was a stout old Puritan, bent upon hewing his way to heaven through all the allurements of this world, and suspecting a devil in every fair show. I fear that he looked upon woman as only a vain and trifling image, a delusive toy, away from whom a man must set his face.

Shakespeare, who was country-bred when he came up to London, and lived probably on the roystering South Side, near the theatres and bear-gardens, seems to have been impressed with the painted faces of the women. It is probable that only town-bred women painted. Stubbes declares that the women of England color their faces with oils, liquors, unguents, and waters made to that end, thinking to make themselves fairer than G.o.d made them--a presumptuous audacity to make G.o.d untrue in his word; and he heaps vehement curses upon the immodest practice. To this follows the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and tricking of their heads, the laying out their hair to show, which is curled, crisped, and laid out on wreaths and borders from ear to ear. Lest it should fall down it is under-propped with forks, wires, and what not. On the edges of their bolstered hair (for it standeth crested round about their frontiers, and hanging over their faces like pendices with gla.s.s windows on every side) is laid great wreaths of gold and silver curiously wrought. But this is not the worst nor the tenth part, for no pen is able to describe the wickedness. "The women use great ruffs and neckerchers of holland, lawn, camerick, and such cloth, as the greatest thread shall not be so big as the least hair that is: then, lest they should fall down, they are smeared and starched in the Devil's liquor, I mean Starch; after that dried with great diligence, streaked, patted and rubbed very nicely, and so applied to their goodly necks, and, withall, under-propped with supporta.s.ses, the stately arches of pride; beyond all this they have a further fetch, nothing inferior to the rest; as, namely, three or four degrees of minor ruffs, placed gradatim, step by step, one beneath another, and all under the Master devil ruff. The skirts, then, of these great ruffs are long and side every way, pleted and crested full curiously, G.o.d wot."

Time will not serve us to follow old Stubbes into his particular inquisition of every article of woman's attire, and his hearty d.a.m.nation of them all and several. He cannot even abide their carrying of nosegays and posies of flowers to smell at, since the palpable odors and fumes of these do enter the brain to degenerate the spirit and allure to vice.

They must needs carry looking-gla.s.ses with them; "and good reason," says Stubbes, savagely, "for else how could they see the devil in them? for no doubt they are the devil's spectacles [these women] to allure us to pride and consequently to destruction forever." And, as if it were not enough to be women, and the devil's aids, they do also have doublets and jerkins, b.u.t.toned up the breast, and made with wings, welts, and pinions on the shoulder points, as man's apparel is, for all the world. We take reluctant leave of this entertaining woman-hater, and only stay to quote from him a "fearful judgment of G.o.d, shewed upon a gentlewoman of Antwerp of late, even the 27th of May, 1582," which may be as profitable to read now as it was then: "This gentlewoman being a very rich Merchant man's daughter: upon a time was invited to a bridal, or wedding, which was solemnized in that Toune, against which day she made great preparation, for the pluming herself in gorgeous array, that as her body was most beautiful, fair, and proper, so her attire in every respect might be correspondent to the same. For the accomplishment whereof she curled her hair, she dyed her locks, and laid them out after the best manner, she colored her face with waters and Ointments: But in no case could she get any (so curious and dainty she was) that could starch, and set her Ruffs and Neckerchers to her mind wherefore she sent for a couple of Laundresses, who did the best they could to please her humors, but in any wise they could not. Then fell she to swear and tear, to curse and d.a.m.n, casting the Ruffs under feet, and wis.h.i.+ng that the Devil might take her when she wear any of those Neckerchers again. In the meantime (through the sufference of G.o.d) the Devil transforming himself into the form of a young man, as brave and proper as she in every point of outward appearance, came in, feigning himself to be a wooer or suitor unto her.

And seeing her thus agonized, and in such a pelting chase, he demanded of her the cause thereof, who straightway told him (as women can conceal nothing that lieth upon their stomachs) how she was abused in the setting of her Ruffs, which thing being heard of him, he promised to please her mind, and thereto took in hand the setting of her Ruffs, which he performed to her great contentation and liking, in so much as she looking herself in a gla.s.s (as the Devil bade her) became greatly enamoured of him. This done, the young man kissed her, in the doing whereof she writhe her neck in, sunder, so she died miserably, her body being metamorphosed into black and blue colors, most ugglesome to behold, and her face (which before was so amorous) became most deformed, and fearful to look upon.

This being known, preparence was made for her burial, a rich coffin was provided, and her fearful body was laid therein, and it covered very sumptuously. Four men immediately a.s.sayed to lift up the corpse, but could not move it; then six attempted the like, but could not once stir it from the place where it stood. Whereat the standers-by marveling, caused the coffin to be opened to see the cause thereof. Where they found the body to be taken away, and a black Cat very lean and deformed sitting in the coffin, setting of great Ruffs, and frizzling of hair, to the great fear and wonder of all beholders."

Better than this pride which forerunneth destruction, in the opinion of Stubbes, is the habit of the Brazilian women, who "esteem so little of apparel" that they rather choose to go naked than be thought to be proud.

As I read the times of Elizabeth, there was then greater prosperity and enjoyment of life among the common people than fifty or a hundred years later. Into the question of the prices of labor and of food, which Mr.

Froude considers so fully in the first chapter of his history, I shall not enter any further than to remark that the hardness of the laborer's lot, who got, mayhap, only twopence a day, is mitigated by the fact that for a penny he could buy a pound of meat which now costs a s.h.i.+lling. In two respects England has greatly changed for the traveler, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century--in its inns and its roads.

In the beginning of Elizabeth's reign travelers had no choice but to ride on horseback or to walk. Goods were transported on strings of pack-horses. When Elizabeth rode into the city from her residence at Greenwich, she placed herself behind her lord chancellor, on a pillion.

The first improvement made was in the construction of a rude wagon a cart without springs, the body resting solidly on the axles. In such a vehicle Elizabeth rode to the opening of her fifth Parliament. In 1583, on a certain day, Sir Harry Sydney entered Shrewsbury in his wagon, "with his trompeter blowynge, verey joyfull to behold and see." Even such conveyances fared hard on the execrable roads of the period. Down to the end of the seventeenth century most of the country roads were merely broad ditches, water-worn and strewn with loose stones. In 1640 Queen Henrietta was four weary days dragging over the road from Dover to London, the best in England. Not till the close of the sixteenth century was the wagon used, and then rarely. Fifty years later stage-wagons ran, with some regularity, between London and Liverpool; and before the close of the seventeenth century the stagecoach, a wonderful invention, which had been used in and about London since 1650, was placed on three princ.i.p.al roads of the kingdom. It averaged two to three miles an hour.

In the reign of Charles II. a Frenchman who landed at Dover was drawn up to London in a wagon with six horses in a line, one after the other. Our Venetian, Busino, who went to Oxford in the coach with the amba.s.sador in 1617, was six days in going one hundred and fifty miles, as the coach often stuck in the mud, and once broke down. So bad were the main thoroughfares, even, that markets were sometimes inaccessible for months together, and the fruits of the earth rotted in one place, while there was scarcity not many miles distant.

But this difficulty of travel and liability to be detained long on the road were cheered by good inns, such as did not exist in the world elsewhere. All the literature of the period reflects lovingly the homelike delights of these comfortable houses of entertainment. Every little village boasted an excellent inn, and in the towns on the great thoroughfares were sumptuous houses that would accommodate from two to three hundred guests with their horses. The landlords were not tyrants, as on the Continent, but servants of their guests; and it was, says Harrison, a world to see how they did contend for the entertainment of their guests--as about fineness and change of linen, furniture of bedding, beauty of rooms, service at the table, costliness of plate, strength of drink, variety of wines, or well-using of horses. The gorgeous signs at their doors sometimes cost forty pounds. The inns were cheap too, and the landlord let no one depart dissatisfied with his bill.

The worst inns were in London, and the tradition has been handed down.

But the ostlers, Harrison confesses, did sometimes cheat in the feed, and they with the tapsters and chamberlains were in league (and the landlord was not always above suspicion) with highwaymen outside, to ascertain if the traveler carried any valuables; so that when he left the hospitable inn he was quite likely to be stopped on the highway and relieved of his money. The highwayman was a conspicuous character. One of the most romantic of these gentry at one time was a woman named Mary Frith, born in 1585, and known as Moll Cut-Purse. She dressed in male attire, was an adroit fencer, a bold rider, and a staunch royalist; she once took two hundred gold jacobuses from the Parliamentary General Fairfax on Hounslow Heath. She is the chief character in Middleton's play of the "Roaring Girl"; and after a varied life as a thief, cutpurse, pickpocket, highwayman, trainer of animals, and keeper of a thieves' fence, she died in peace at the age of seventy. To return to the inns, Fyner Morrison, a traveler in 1617, sustains all that Harrison says of the inns as the best and cheapest in the world, where the guest shall have his own pleasure.

No sooner does he arrive than the servants run to him--one takes his horse, another shows him his chamber and lights his fire, a third pulls off his boots. Then come the host and hostess to inquire what meat he will choose, and he may have their company if he like. He shall be offered music while he eats, and if he be solitary the musicians will give him good-day with music in the morning. In short, "a man cannot more freely command at home, in his own house, than he may do in his inn."

The amus.e.m.e.nts of the age were often rough, but certainly more moral than they were later; and although the theatres were denounced by such reformers as Stubbes as seminaries of vice, and disapproved by Harrison; they were better than after the Restoration, when the plays of Shakespeare were out of fas.h.i.+on. The Londoners went for amus.e.m.e.nt to the Bankside, or South Side of the Thames, where were the famous Paris Gardens, much used as a rendezvous by gallants; and there were the places for bear and bull baiting; and there were the theatres--the Paris Gardens, the Swan, the Rose, the Hope, and the Globe. The pleasure-seekers went over usually in boats, of which there were said to be four thousand plying between banks; for there was only one bridge, and that was crowded with houses. All distinguished visitors were taken over to see the gardens and the bears baited by dogs; the queen herself went, and perhaps on Sunday, for Sunday was the great day, and Elizabeth is said to have encouraged Sunday sports, she had been (we read) so much hunted on account of religion! These sports are too brutal to think of; but there are amusing accounts of lion-baiting both by bears and dogs, in which the beast who figures so n.o.bly on the escutcheon nearly always proved himself an arrant coward, and escaped away as soon as he could into his den, with his tail between his legs. The spectators were once much disgusted when a lion and lioness, with the dog that pursued them, all ran into the den, and, like good friends, stood very peaceably together looking out at the people.

The famous Globe Theatre, which was built in 1599, was burned in 1613, and in the fire it is supposed were consumed Shakespeare's ma.n.u.scripts of his plays. It was of wood (for use in summer only), octagon shaped, with a thatched roof, open in the centre. The daily performance here, as in all theatres, was at three o'clock in the afternoon, and boys outside held the horses of the gentlemen who went in to the play. When theatres were restrained, in 1600, only two were allowed, the Globe and the Fortune, which was on the north side, on Golden Lane. The Fortune was fifty feet square within, and three stories high, with galleries, built of wood on a brick foundation, and with a roof of tiles. The stage was forty-three feet wide, and projected into the middle of the yard (as the pit was called), where the groundlings stood. To one of the galleries admission was only twopence. The young gallants used to go into the yards and spy about the galleries and boxes for their acquaintances. In these theatres there was a drop-curtain, but little or no scenery. Spectators had boxes looking on the stage behind the curtain, and they often sat upon the stage with the actors; sometimes the actors all remained upon the stage during the whole play. There seems to have been great familiarity between the audience and the actors. Fruits in season, apples, pears, and nuts, with wine and beer, were carried about to be sold, and pipes were smoked. There was neither any prudery in the plays or the players, and the audiences in behavior were no better than the plays.

The actors were all men. The female parts were taken usually by boys, but frequently by grown men, and when Juliet or Desdemona was announced, a giant would stride upon the stage. There is a story that Kynaston, a handsome fellow, famous in female characters, and petted by ladies of rank, once kept Charles I. waiting while he was being shaved before appearing as Evadne in "The Maid's Tragedy." The innovation of women on the stage was first introduced by a French company in 1629, but the audiences would not tolerate it, and hissed and pelted the actresses off the stage. But thirty years later women took the place they have ever since held; when the populace had once experienced the charm of a female Juliet and Ophelia, they would have no other, and the rage for actresses ran to such excess at one time that it was a fas.h.i.+on for women to take the male parts as well. But that was in the abandoned days of Charles II.

Pepys could not control his delight at the appearance of Nell Gwynne, especially "when she comes like a young gallant, and hath the motions and carriage of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I confess, admire her." The acting of Shakespeare himself is only a faint tradition. He played the ghost in "Hamlet," and Adam in "As You Like It."

William Oldys says (Oldys was an antiquarian who was pottering about in the first part of the eighteenth century, picking up gossip in coffee-houses, and making memoranda on sc.r.a.ps of paper in book-shops) Shakespeare's brother Charles, who lived past the middle of the seventeenth century, was much inquired of by actors about the circ.u.mstances of Shakespeare's playing. But Charles was so old and weak in mind that he could recall nothing except the faint impression that he had once seen "Will" act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein, being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to walk that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company who were eating, and one of them sang a song.

And that was Shakespeare!

The whole Bankside, with its taverns, play-houses, and worse, its bear pits and gardens, was the scene of roystering and coa.r.s.e amus.e.m.e.nt. And it is surprising that plays of such sustained moral greatness as Shakespeare's should have been welcome.

The more private amus.e.m.e.nts of the great may well be ill.u.s.trated by an account given by Busino of a masque (it was Ben Jonson's "Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue") performed at Whitehall on Twelfthnight, 1617.

During the play, twelve cavaliers in masks, the central figure of whom was Prince Charles, chose partners, and danced every kind of dance, until they got tired and began to flag; whereupon King James, "who is naturally choleric, got impatient, and shouted aloud, 'Why don't they dance? What did you make me come here for? Devil take you all, dance!' On hearing this, the Marquis of Buckingham, his majesty's most favored minion, immediately sprang forward, cutting a score of lofty and very minute capers, with so much grace and agility that he not only appeased the ire of his angry sovereign, but moreover rendered himself the admiration and delight of everybody. The other masquers, being thus encouraged, continued successively exhibiting their powers with various ladies, finis.h.i.+ng in like manner with capers, and by lifting their G.o.ddesses from the ground . . . . The prince, however, excelled them all in bowing, being very exact in making his obeisance both to the king and his partner; nor did we ever see him make one single step out of time--a compliment which can scarcely be paid to his companions. Owing to his youth, he has not much wind as yet, but he nevertheless cut a few capers very gracefully." The prince then went and kissed the hand of his serene parent, who embraced and kissed him tenderly. When such capers were cut at Whitehall, we may imagine what the revelry was in the Bankside taverns.

The punishments of the age were not more tender than the amus.e.m.e.nts were refined. Busino saw a lad of fifteen led to execution for stealing a bag of currants. At the end of every month, besides special executions, as many as twenty-five people at a time rode through London streets in Tyburn carts, singing ribald songs, and carrying sprigs of rosemary in their hands. Everywhere in the streets the machines of justice were visible-pillories for the neck and hands, stocks for the feet, and chains to stretch across, in case of need, and stop a mob. In the suburbs were oak cages for nocturnal offenders. At the church doors might now and then be seen women enveloped in sheets, doing penance for their evil deeds. A bridle, something like a bit for a restive horse, was in use for the curbing of scolds; but this was a later invention than the cucking-stool, or ducking-stool. There is an old print of one of these machines standing on the Thames' bank: on a wheeled platform is an upright post with a swinging beam across the top, on one end of which the chair is suspended over the river, while the other is worked up and down by a rope; in it is seated a light sister of the Bankside, being dipped into the unsavory flood. But this was not so hated by the women as a similar discipline--being dragged in the river by a rope after a boat.

Hanging was the common punishment for felony, but traitors and many other offenders were drawn, hanged, boweled, and quartered; n.o.bles who were traitors usually escaped with having their heads chopped off only.

Torture was not practiced; for, says Harrison, our people despise death, yet abhor to be tormented, being of frank and open minds. And "this is one cause why our condemned persons do go so cheerfully to their deaths, for our nation is free, stout, hearty, and prodigal of life and blood, and cannot in any wise digest to be used as villains and slaves." Felony covered a wide range of petty crimes--breach of prison, hunting by night with painted or masked faces, stealing above forty s.h.i.+llings, stealing hawks' eggs, conjuring, prophesying upon arms and badges, stealing deer by night, cutting purses, counterfeiting coin, etc. Death was the penalty for all these offenses. For poisoning her husband a woman was burned alive; a man poisoning another was boiled to death in water or oil; heretics were burned alive; some murderers were hanged in chains; perjurers were branded on the forehead with the letter P; rogues were burned through the ears; suicides were buried in a field with a stake driven through their bodies; witches were burned or hanged; in Halifax thieves were beheaded by a machine almost exactly like the modern guillotine; scolds were ducked; pirates were hanged on the seash.o.r.e at low-water mark, and left till three tides overwashed them; those who let the sea-walls decay were staked out in the breach of the banks, and left there as parcel of the foundation of the new wall. Of rogues-that is, tramps and petty thieves-the gallows devoured three to four hundred annually, in one place or another; and Henry VIII. in his time did hang up as many as seventy-two thousand rogues. Any parish which let a thief escape was fined. Still the supply held out.

The legislation against vagabonds, tramps, and st.u.r.dy beggars, and their punishment by whipping, branding, etc., are too well known to need comment. But considerable provision was made for the unfortunate and deserving poor--poorhouses were built for them, and collections taken up.

Only sixty years before Harrison wrote there were few beggars, but in his day he numbers them at ten thousand; and most of them were rogues, who counterfeited sores and wounds, and were mere thieves and caterpillars on the commonwealth. He names twenty-three different sorts of vagabonds known by cant names, such as "ruffers," "uprightmen," "priggers,"

"fraters," "palliards," "Abrams," "dummerers "; and of women, "demanders for glimmer or fire," "mortes," "walking mortes," "doxes," "kinching coves."

London was esteemed by its inhabitants and by many foreigners as the richest and most magnificent city in Christendom. The cities of London and Westminster lay along the north bank in what seemed an endless stretch; on the south side of the Thames the houses were more scattered.

But the town was mostly of wood, and its rapid growth was a matter of anxiety. Both Elizabeth and James again and again attempted to restrict it by forbidding the erection of any new buildings within the town, or for a mile outside; and to this attempt was doubtless due the crowded rookeries in the city. They especially forbade the use of wood in house-fronts and windows, both on account of the danger from fire, and because all the timber in the kingdom, which was needed for s.h.i.+pping and other purposes, was being used up in building. They even ordered the pulling down of new houses in London, Westminster, and for three miles around. But all efforts to stop the growth of the city were vain.

London, according to the Venetian Busino, was extremely dirty. He did not admire the wooden architecture; the houses were damp and cold, the staircases spiral and inconvenient, the apartments "sorry and ill connected." The wretched windows, without shutters, he could neither open by day nor close by night. The streets were little better than gutters, and were never put in order except for some great parade. Hentzner, however, thought the streets handsome and clean. When it rained it must have been otherwise. There was no provision for conducting away the water; it poured off the roofs upon the people below, who had not as yet heard of the Oriental umbrella; and the countryman, staring at the sights of the town, knocked about by the carts, and run over by the hors.e.m.e.n, was often surprised by a douche from a conduit down his back. And, besides, people had a habit of throwing water and slops out of the windows, regardless of pa.s.sers-by.

The shops were small, open in front, when the shutters were down, much like those in a Cairo bazaar, and all the goods were in sight. The shopkeepers stood in front and cried their wares, and besought customers.

Until 1568 there were but few silk shops in London, and all those were kept by women. It was not till about that time that citizens' wives ceased to wear white knit woolen caps, and three-square Minever caps with peaks. In the beginning of Elizabeth's reign the apprentices (a conspicuous cla.s.s) wore blue cloaks in winter and blue gowns in summer; unless men were threescore years old, it was not lawful to wear gowns lower than the calves of the legs, but the length of cloaks was not limited. The journeymen and apprentices wore long daggers in the daytime at their backs or sides. When the apprentices attended their masters and mistresses in the night they carried lanterns and candles, and a great long club on the neck. These apprentices were apt to lounge with their clubs about the fronts of shops, ready to take a hand in any excitement --to run down a witch, or raid an objectionable house, or tear down a tavern of evil repute, or spoil a playhouse. The high-streets, especially in winter-time, were annoyed by hourly frays of sword and buckler-men; but these were suddenly suppressed when the more deadly fight with rapier and dagger came in. The streets were entirely unlighted and dangerous at night, and for this reason the plays at the theatres were given at three in the afternoon.

About Shakespeare's time many new inventions and luxuries came in: masks, m.u.f.fs, fans, periwigs, shoe-roses, love-handkerchiefs (tokens given by maids and gentlewomen to their favorites), heath-brooms for hair-brushes, scarfs, garters, waistcoats, flat-caps; also hops, turkeys, apricots, Venice gla.s.s, tobacco. In 1524, and for years after, was used this rhyme

"Turkeys, Carpes, Hops: Piccarel, and beers, Came into England: all in one year."

There were no coffee-houses as yet, for neither tea nor coffee was introduced till about 1661. Tobacco was first made known in England by Sir John Hawkins in 1565, though not commonly used by men and women till some years after. It was urged as a great medicine for many ills.

Harrison says, 1573, "In these days the taking in of the smoke of the Indian herb called 'Tabaco,' by an instrument formed like a little ladle, whereby it pa.s.seth from the mouth into the head and stomach, is greatly taken up and used in England, against Rewmes and some other diseases engendered in the lungs and inward parts, and not without effect." It's use spread rapidly, to the disgust of James I. and others, who doubted that it was good for cold, aches, humors, and rheums. In 1614 it was said that seven thousand houses lived by this trade, and that L 399,375 a year was spent in smoke. Tobacco was even taken on the stage. Every base groom must have his pipe; it was sold in all inns and ale-houses, and the shops of apothecaries, grocers, and chandlers were almost never, from morning till night, without company still taking of tobacco.

There was a saying on the Continent that "England is a paradise for women, a prison for servants, and a h.e.l.l or purgatory for horses." The society was very simple compared with the complex condition of ours, and yet it had more striking contrasts, and was a singular mixture of downrightness and artificiality; plainness and rudeness of speech went with the utmost artificiality of dress and manner. It is curious to note the insular, not to say provincial, character of the people even three centuries ago. When the Londoners saw a foreigner very well made or particularly handsome, they were accustomed to say, "It is a pity he is not an ENGLISHMAN." It is pleasant, I say, to trace this "certain condescension" in the good old times. Jacob Rathgeb (1592) says the English are magnificently dressed, and extremely proud and overbearing; the merchants, who seldom go unto other countries, scoff at foreigners, who are liable to be ill-used by street boys and apprentices, who collect in immense crowds and stop the way. Of course Ca.s.sandra Stubbes, whose mind was set upon a better country, has little good to say of his countrymen.

"As concerning the nature, propertie, and disposition of the people they be desirous of new fangles, praising things past, contemning things present, and coveting after things to come. Ambitious, proud, light, and unstable, ready to be carried away with every blast of wind." The French paid back with scorn the traditional hatred of the English for the French. Perlin (1558) finds the people "proud and seditious, with bad consciences and unfaithful to their word in war unfortunate, in peace unfaithful"; and there was a Spanish or Italian proverb: "England, good land, bad people." But even Perlin likes the appearance of the people: "The men are handsome, rosy, large, and dexterous, usually fair-skinned; the women are esteemed the most beautiful in the world, white as alabaster, and give place neither to Italian, Flemish, nor German; they are joyous, courteous, and hospitable (de bon recueil)." He thinks their manners, however, little civilized: for one thing, they have an unpleasant habit of eructation at the table (car iceux routent a la table sans honte & ignominie); which recalls Chaucer's description of the Trumpington miller's wife and daughter:

"Men might her rowtyng hearen a forlong, The wenche routeth eek par companye."

Another inference as to the table manners of the period is found in Coryat's "Crudities" (1611). He saw in Italy generally a curious custom of using a little fork for meat, and whoever should take the meat out of the dish with his fingers--would give offense. And he accounts for this peculiarity quite naturally: "The reason of this their curiosity is, because the Italian cannot by any means indure to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all men's fingers are not alike cleane." Coryat found the use of the fork nowhere else in Christendom, and when he returned, and, oftentimes in England, imitated the Italian fas.h.i.+on, his exploit was regarded in a humorous light. Busino says that fruits were seldom served at dessert, but that the whole population were munching them in the streets all day long, and in the places of amus.e.m.e.nt; and it was an amus.e.m.e.nt to go out into the orchards and eat fruit on the spot, in a sort of compet.i.tion of gormandize between the city belles and their admirers. And he avers that one young woman devoured twenty pounds of cherries, beating her opponent by two pounds and a half.

All foreigners were struck with the English love of music and drink, of banqueting and good cheer. Perlin notes a pleasant custom at table: during the feast you hear more than a hundred times, "Drink iou" (he loves to air his English), that is to say, "Je m'en vois boyre a toy."

You respond, in their language, "Iplaigiu"; that is to say, "Je vous plege." If you thank them, they say in their language, "G.o.d tanque artelay"; that is, "Je vous remercie de bon coeur." And then, says the artless Frenchman, still improving on his English, you should respond thus: "BiG.o.d, sol drink iou agoud oin." At the great and princely banquets, when the pledge went round and the heart's desire of lasting health, says the chronicler, "the same was straight wayes knowne, by sound of Drumme and Trumpet, and the cannon's loudest voyce." It was so in Hamlet's day:

"And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph of his pledge."

According to Hentzner (1598), the English are serious, like the Germans, and love show and to be followed by troops of servants wearing the arms of their masters; they excel in music and dancing, for they are lively and active, though thicker of make than the French; they cut their hair close in the middle of the head, letting it grow on either side; "they are good sailors, and better pyrates, cunning, treacherous, and thievish;" and, he adds, with a touch of satisfaction, "above three hundred are said to be hanged annually in London." They put a good deal of sugar in their drink; they are vastly fond of great noises, firing of cannon, beating of drums, and ringing of bells, and when they have a gla.s.s in their heads they go up into some belfry, and ring the bells for hours together, for the sake of exercise. Perlin's comment is that men are hung for a trifle in England, and that you will not find many lords whose parents have not had their heads chopped off.