The People For Whom Shakespeare Wrote

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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 fashion 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 scraps 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
circumstances 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 coarse amusement. And
it is surprising that plays of such sustained moral greatness as
Shakespeare's should have been welcome.

The more private amusements of the great may well be illustrated 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,
finishing in like manner with capers, and by lifting their goddesses 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 amusements 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; nobles 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 shillings, 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 seashore 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 sturdy 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 shipping 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 horsemen,
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 passers-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 class) 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,
muffs, 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 glass, 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 passeth 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 hell 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 Cassandra 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 fashion, 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 amusement; and it was an
amusement to go out into the orchards and eat fruit on the spot, in a
sort of competition 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, "God 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: "Bigod, 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
glass 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.

It is a pleasure to turn to the simple and hearty admiration excited in
the breasts of all susceptible foreigners by the English women of the
time. Van Meteren, as we said, calls the women beautiful, fair, well
dressed, and modest. To be sure, the wives are, their lives only
excepted, entirely in the power of their husbands, yet they have great
liberty; go where they please; are shown the greatest honor at banquets,
where they sit at the upper end of the table and are first served; are
fond of dress and gossip and of taking it easy; and like to sit before
their doors, decked out in fine clothes, in order to see and be seen by
the passers-by. Rathgeb also agrees that the women have much more liberty
than in any other place. When old Busino went to the Masque at Whitehall,
his colleagues kept exclaiming, "Oh, do look at this one--oh, do see
that! Whose wife is this?--and that pretty one near her, whose daughter
is she?" There was some chaff mixed in, he allows, some shriveled skins
and devotees of S. Carlo Borromeo, but the beauties greatly predominated.

In the great street pageants, it was the beauty and winsomeness of the
London ladies, looking on, that nearly drove the foreigners wild. In
1606, upon the entry of the king of Denmark, the chronicler celebrates
"the unimaginable number of gallant ladies, beauteous virgins, and other
delicate dames, filling the windows of every house with kind aspect." And
in 1638, when Cheapside was all alive with the pageant of the entry of
the queen mother, "this miserable old queen," as Lilly calls Marie de'
Medicis (Mr. Furnivall reproduces an old cut of the scene), M. de la
Serre does not try to restrain his admiration for the pretty women on
view: only the most fecund imagination can represent the content one has
in admiring the infinite number of beautiful women, each different from
the other, and each distinguished by some sweetness or grace to ravish
the heart and take captive one's liberty. No sooner has he determined to
yield to one than a new object of admiration makes him repent the
precipitation of his judgment.

And all the other foreigners were in the like case of "goneness."
Kiechel, writing in 1585, says, "Item, the women there are charming, and
by nature so mighty pretty as I have scarcely ever beheld, for they do
not falsify, paint, or bedaub themselves as in Italy or other places;"
yet he confesses (and here is another tradition preserved) "they are
somewhat awkward in their style of dress." His second "item" of gratitude
is a Netherland custom that pleased him--whenever a foreigner or an
inhabitant went to a citizen's house on business, or as a guest, he was
received by the master, the lady, or the daughter, and "welcomed" (as it
is termed in their language); "he has a right to take them by the arm and
to kiss them, which is the custom of the country; and if any one does not
do so, it is regarded and imputed as ignorance and ill-breeding on his
part." Even the grave Erasmus, when he visited England, fell easily into
this pretty practice, and wrote with untheological fervor of the "girls
with angel faces," who were "so kind and obliging." "Wherever you come,"
he says, "you are received with a kiss by all; when you take your leave
you are dismissed with kisses; you return, kisses are repeated. They come
to visit you, kisses again; they leave you, you kiss them all round.
Should they meet you anywhere, kisses in abundance in fine, wherever you
move there is nothing but kisses"--a custom, says this reformer, who has
not the fear of Stubbes before his eyes, "never to be sufficiently
commended."

We shall find no more convenient opportunity to end this part of the
social study of the age of Shakespeare than with this naive picture of
the sex which most adorned it. Some of the details appear trivial; but
grave history which concerns itself only with the actions of conspicuous
persons, with the manoeuvres of armies, the schemes of politics, the
battles of theologies, fails signally to give us the real life of the
people by which we judge the character of an age.




III

When we turn from France to England in, the latter part of the sixteenth
and the beginning of the seventeenth century, we are in another
atmosphere; we encounter a literature that smacks of the soil, that is as
varied, as racy, often as rude, as human life itself, and which cannot be
adequately appreciated except by a study of the popular mind and the
history of the time which produced it.

"Voltaire," says M. Guizot, "was the first person in France who spoke of
Shakespeare's genius; and although he spoke of him merely as a barbarian
genius, the French public were of the opinion that he had said too much
in his favor. Indeed, they thought it nothing less than profanation to
apply the words genius and glory to dramas which they considered as crude
as they were coarse."

Guizot was one of the first of his nation to approach Shakespeare in the
right spirit--that is, in the spirit in which he could hope for any
enlightenment; and in his admirable essay on "Shakespeare and His Times,"
he pointed out the exact way in which any piece or period of literature
should be studied, that is worth studying at all. He inquired into
English civilization, into the habits, manners, and modes of thought of
the people for whom Shakespeare wrote. This method, this inquiry into
popular sources, has been carried much further since Guizot wrote, and it
is now considered the most remunerative method, whether the object of
study is literature or politics. By it not only is the literature of a
period for the first time understood, but it is given its just place as
an exponent of human life and a monument of human action.

The student who takes up Shakespeare's plays for the purpose of either
amusement or cultivation, I would recommend to throw aside the whole load
of commentary, and speculation, and disquisition, and devote himself to
trying to find out first what was the London and the England of
Shakespeare's day, what were the usages of all classes of society, what
were the manners and the character of the people who crowded to hear his
plays, or who denounced them as the works of the devil and the allies of
sin. I say again to the student that by this means Shakespeare will
become a new thing to him, his mind will be enlarged to the purpose and
scope of the great dramatist, and more illumination will be cast upon the
plays than is received from the whole race of inquisitors into his
phrases and critics of his genius. In the light of contemporary life, its
visions of empire, its spirit of adventure, its piracy, exploration, and
warlike turmoil, its credulity and superstitious wonder at natural
phenomena, its implicit belief in the supernatural, its faith, its
virility of daring, coarseness of speech, bluntness of manner, luxury of
apparel, and ostentation of wealth, the mobility of its shifting society,
these dramas glow with a new meaning, and awaken a profounder admiration
of the poet's knowledge of human life.