The People For Whom Shakespeare Wrote

C >> Charles Dudley Warner >> The People For Whom Shakespeare Wrote


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 fashion, 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 fashion we are much
inferior to them. For we wear more fantastical fashions 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 fashions 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 fashion, 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 God'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 fashions, 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 passed my skill to determine whether they were men or
women." Of all classes 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
fashionable colors, among which are mentioned a queer greenish-yellow, a
pease-porridge-tawny, a popinjay of blue, a lusty 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
manuscript of Orazio Busino's "Anglipotrida." Busino was the chaplain of
Piero Contarina, the Venetian ambassador to James I, in 1617. The
chaplain was one day stunned with grief over the death of the butler of
the embassy; 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 ambassador 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 fashion 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 apron 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 astonishing change
or changeableness in English fashions, 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
fashions 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, noble air, but dress more after the
French fashion, only they wear short cloaks and sometimes Spanish caps."

Harrison's arraignment of the English fashions 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 shirts of cambric, holland, and lawn,
wrought with fine needle-work of silk and curiously stitched, 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 nobles, ten pound, twenty pound, fortie pound, yea a
hundred pound of one pair of Breeches. (God 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 stitched 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
fashions; some short, reaching to the knee; others dragging on the
ground; red, white, black, violet, yellow, guarded, laced, and faced;
hanged with points and tassels 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 God
made them--a presumptuous audacity to make God untrue in his word; and he
heaps vehement curses upon the immodest practice. To this follows the
trimming 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 glass 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 supportasses, 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, God wot."

Time will not serve us to follow old Stubbes into his particular
inquisition of every article of woman's attire, and his hearty damnation
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-glasses 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, buttoned 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 God, 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 damn,
casting the Ruffs under feet, and wishing that the Devil might take her
when she wear any of those Neckerchers again. In the meantime (through
the sufference of God) 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 glass (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 assayed 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 shilling. 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
principal 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 ambassador 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 amusements 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 fashion. The Londoners went for amusement 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 nobly 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 manuscripts 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.