Part 2
There was little of that never-ceasing bustle with which we are familiar—little of the eternal hurry, the intense strain, the rush and turmoil of our modern existence; but the buzz of commerce was everywhere to be heard, telling us that the world was not asleep. The streets were rough, ill-paved, and narrow, and the appearance of a vehicle in them was sufficiently rare an occurrence to attract attention; though the ostentation of the rich in making use of carriages on every possible occasion was already beginning to be satirized by the writers of the time—as, for instance, by Massinger in “The City Madam,” and by Cooke in “Greene’s Tu Quoque.” There were the churches—six score or so of them, Lyly tells us, within the walls; the inns, with their wide hostleries; the private houses, built not in long uniform rows, but irregularly, as though they desired to preserve some traces of personal character. Their upper stories were frequently built out, and sometimes projected so far across the narrow streetway that Jonson pictures a lady and her lover exchanging confidences from the topmost windows of opposite tenements—“arguing from different premises,” as Dr. Holmes would say. There, too, were the shops, looking more like booths in a fair, with their quaint and picturesque signs, and their merchandise exposed to public gaze on open stalls, while in front of them paced the young apprentices, besieging the ears of every passer-by with their ceaseless clamor of “What d’ye lack?” and their long-winded recommendations of the articles which they had for sale. In Middleton’s “Michaelmas Term” we have a scene before Quomodo’s shop, and Quomodo himself calling out to Easy and Shortyard: “Do you hear, sir? What lack you, gentlemen? See, good kerseys and broadcloths here—I pray you come near.” Many other passages of similar import might be added. Nor were these the only, or even the noisiest, symptoms of commercial enterprise. Itinerant vendors of the Autolycus tribe also patrolled the streets, murdering the Queen’s English, like their descendants of to-day, as in loud, hoarse voices they advertised their miscellaneous wares. There were fishwives, orange-women, and chimney-sweeps, broom-men, hawkers of meat pies and pepper, of rushes for the floor, of mats, oat-cakes, milk, and coal; and numerous Irish costermongers (of the kind Face refers to in “The Alchemist”) who trafficked in fruit and vegetables. In addition to all these, and to complete the confusion of the streets, there were mountebanks, jugglers, and ballad-singers, full of strange tricks and new songs, whereby to attract attention and pick up a few odd coins.
The daily round of existence in the city streets offered, therefore, no small amount of interest and variety; while from time to time the ordinary routine was broken in upon by fresh elements of excitement. Now it might be a splendid procession—perhaps of one of the great livery companies, purse-proud and ostentatious; perhaps of the newly-installed Lord Mayor, on his way back from Westminster; perhaps of the Virgin Queen and her retinue, coming cityward on some state occasion from Richmond or Whitehall. Now, again, it might be a procession of a very different kind—a mob following a thief who was going to be put into the pillory, or a woman of disreputable character who, meeting the fate dreaded by Doll Common, was carted through the streets to the accompaniment of a brass band, and amid the cries and hootings of the populace; or a group of felons who were led out of the city along Holborn to Tyburn, there to pay the last penalty of the law. Sometimes, too, there were large gatherings in St. Paul’s churchyard to hear some famous preacher—like Bishop Jewell—discourse from the steps of the great cross; and sometimes there were street fights between retainers of rival houses, or bands of hot-tempered ’prentices belonging to the different city guilds—fights which generally ended in bloodshed and broken heads. The ’prentices of the city were indeed notoriously a turbulent tribe, and they figure in many a brawl and squabble in the plays of the time. “If he were in London, among the clubs, up went his heels for striking of a ’prentice,” says Gazet, in Massinger’s “Renegado,” referring in this phrase to the fact that clubs were habitually kept in the shops ready for use in the event of any affray. So that the London streets were not so dull as one might at first suppose; while for the rest there was plenty of quiet, steady activity from dawn till dusk. Though the struggle for wealth was not then so keen as it is to-day, and men on the whole took things more easily, life was full of earnestness and purpose, and commercial ambition shared the magnificent vigor and energy of the Elizabethan nature with the fever of adventure and a youthful, spontaneous, and unabashed delight in the pleasures of sense. Wide roads were open to the young man of brains and courage, roads which would lead to place and power. Fortunes were to be made, positions won; and the ’prentice, starting out in his career, had many examples of self-made and successful men to remind him that the world was all before him where to choose, and that the future largely depended upon himself. Thus, though the London of Shakspere’s time was far different from the London of to-day as regards its commerce, its activities, its habits and daily life, it was still a thriving city, the object of ambition, the dreamland of the aspiring youth, the great heart which set the blood pulsing and dancing through all the arteries of the land.
As for the shops themselves, we must dismiss them with a very few words. The modern difficulty—the importation of foreign wares, and the immigration of foreign dealers—was already to the front; and Italian, French, German, Spanish, and Flemish tradesmen were to be found in almost every street—each with his peculiar class of custom. Some writers of the time, like William Stafford, in his “Brief Conceit,” grow violent over the inroads of these aliens, and roundly proclaim, with Bishop Hall, that all the vice of the city was to be laid at their doors. But in the ordinary walks of business the Englishman, in spite of a good deal of characteristic bluster and grumbling, still held his ground. The apothecary sold love-charms and philters, tobacco, cane, and pudding, as well as drugs; but there were regular tobacco merchants, also, whose shops were of unrivalled splendor. The immense vogue of this novel luxury is sufficiently shown by the statement made by Barnaby Riche in “The Honesty of this Age,” that seven thousand shops in London “vented” tobacco, and by the passing remark of Hentzner, that it was smoked (or “drunk,” as the phrase then went) everywhere. At the theatre and all such places of public resort, the pipe was the Englishman’s habitual companion, and from sundry passages in Jonson, Dekker, Marston, and other dramatists, we infer that it was sometimes carried even to church.
Among the most noteworthy of the tradesmen of the time were the barbers, who, be it remembered, were surgeons as well, and would cut your beard or bleed you, trim your hair or pull out your teeth, with absolute impartiality. Their shops were the favorite resorts of idlers, as they had been long since in the days of Lucian; and owing to the immense attention then paid to hair and beard, the more accomplished among them drove an enormous trade. Their garrulity was proverbial. “Oh, sir, you know I am a barber and cannot tittle-tattle,” says Dello, in Lyly’s “Midas,” in a scene which is full of curious information concerning the barbers of the time. The Cutbeard of Jonson’s “Silent Woman,” is another illustration in point. It may be mentioned, as an odd feature of their establishments, that a lute was commonly kept in readiness for the amusement of those who might have to wait for attention, as the newspapers and comic weeklies are kept to-day. “Barbers shall wear thee on their citterns,” says Rhetias to Coculus, in Ford’s “Lover’s Melancholy,” referring to the grotesque figureheads by which these instruments were often decorated.
In the matter of the relations of sellers and purchasers, we may note, as one of those little touches of nature which make the whole world kin, that customers, as we learn from more than one old play, often indulged in the quite modern practice of having half the goods in a shop laid out for inspection before buying the most trumpery article. Nor, on the other hand, were the dealers of the time much behind their descendants of to-day in what are known as the tricks of trade. Adulteration was a crying evil; some of the methods often employed, for example, for the “sophistication” of tobacco, will be recalled by all readers of “The Alchemist.” Another common practice among shopkeepers was that of darkening their stores to disguise the inferiority of their merchandise. This is constantly referred to by contemporary writers. The sturdy Stubbs attacks the abuse in his “Display of Corruptions.” “They have their shops and places where they sell their cloth very dark and obscure,” he writes, referring to the mercers and drapers of his time, “of purpose to deceive buyers.” Webster, in “The Duchess of Malfi,” employs this familiar abuse in the turn of a compliment: “This darkening of your worth is not like that which tradesmen use in the city; their false lights are to rid bad wares off;” and Quomodo, in “Michaelmas Term,” boasts, humanly enough, that his shop is not “so dark as some of his neighbors’.” Again, Brome, in the “City Wit”: “What should the city do with honesty? Why are your wares gummed? Your shops dark?” In “Westward Ho” we read that the shop of a linen-draper was generally “as dark as a room in Bedlam,” and, not to multiply quotations, Middleton, in “Anything for a Quiet Life,” speaks of shopwares being habitually “set in deceiving lights.” Colliers, too, were so notorious for short measure and other crafty practices that Greene, in his “Notable Discovery of Cosenage,” includes a special “delightful discourse” on purpose to lay bare their knavery.
The houses were not yet numbered, and all trading establishments were known by their tokens—great signboards decorating every shop with strange mottoes and fantastic devices, which took the place of the advertising media of the present day. Milton, we remember, was born at the Spread Eagle, in Bread Street, and well on in the eighteenth century the imprints of publishers still refer to these customary signs; as in the case of the famous “left-legged Tonson,” who did business at “Shakespeare’s Head, over against Catherine Street, in the Strand.” Quotations illustrative of these trading tokens and the part they played in the commercial life of the time might be indefinitely multiplied; but we must content ourselves with a single bit of evidence from “The Alchemist.” Abel Drugger, the young tradesman, is opening a new shop, and comes to Subtle to take his advice about the choice of a suitable device. In the one suggested by Subtle, Jonson satirizes the wildly absurd combinations frequently employed, like the foolish advertisements of our own century, to attract or compel public attention:—
“He shall have a bel, that’s Abel; And by it standing one whose name is Dee, In a rug gown, there’s D and Rug, that’s _drug_; And right anenst him a dog snarling Er— There’s Drugger, Abel Drugger—there’s his sign.”
It is hardly necessary to add that though these signs have practically disappeared from general use, they survive in trademarks and in the odd and often outlandish trading tokens still to be seen over the doors of English public houses and inns; though just why public houses should have kept up a practice otherwise almost universally abandoned since the numbering of houses came into vogue, it would be difficult to say.
But with the oncoming of the night, silence, for the most part, fell over the city and its surroundings. There was as yet no public lighting of the streets, but the good citizens were supposed to do their individual shares towards illuminating the dark thoroughfares, to insure which the watchmen, with lanterns and halberts, would pace their solemn rounds, hoarsely bawling at every doorway, “Lantern and a whole candle-light! Hang out your lights here!” Writing from Paris in 1620, and referring to the terrible condition of the streets in the French capital, Howell says: “This makes one think often of the excellent nocturnal government of our city of London, where one may pass and repass securely all hours of the night, if he gives good words to the watch.” Yet it is to be feared that this patriotic comment puts the matter in a somewhat too favorable way. The impression one derives from reading the plays and pamphlets of the time certainly is that the roads were always more or less dangerous after dark, and that good, law-abiding townsfolk were best off within doors, or, at all events, in the immediate neighborhood of their own houses. If they were forced to go farther afield, they would do well to take a link-boy with them to guide them with his light, unless they were like Falstaff, who, as we remember, once told Bardolph that he been saved a thousand marks in links and torches walking between tavern and tavern, owing to the fiery and luminous character of the said Bardolph’s nose. A stout ’prentice boy with a well-weighted club was a desirable companion, too, for those who valued purses and pates. For the streets were infested by “roaring boys” and wild young bloods, whose principal amusement, besides fighting among themselves, was in persecuting quiet citizens, and who came into almost nightly conflict with the doting old Dogberry watchmen, who endeavored to cope with them, often with but very slight success. These are the fine fellows described in Shirley’s “Gamester,”—
“that roar In brothels, and break windows, fright the streets, And sometimes set upon innocent bell-men to beget Discourse for a week’s diet,”
and whom Jonson’s Kastril looked up to with so much admiration and respect.
* * * * *
I could not hope by any series of thumbnail sketches to conjure up the manifold details of the daily life of Elizabethan London as one finds it portrayed in the plays of Jonson, Middleton, Dekker, Cooke, and the strange pamphlets of Nash and Greene. But we must not linger over these street scenes. It is ample time that we should pass on to consider a little the various classes which went to make up the population of the metropolis in the days of which we speak.
In the common relationships of class with class the age of Elizabeth differed widely from our own. Sociability was one of the main characteristics of the time, and this the guild life of the larger towns did much to foster. In the places of common resort—in the tavern, the theatre, at St. Paul’s Walk, or the Archery Ground at Finsbury, men daily met their neighbors and brother-citizens, and rubbed shoulders and chopped opinions with a warmth and open-heartedness which, if they had little of modern propriety, also knew little of modern restraint. Moreover, London was not then the vast, overgrown, incoherent city which it has since become, and its inhabitants still took that personal interest in one another’s doings, and felt, to some extent at any rate, that sense of family sympathy which, though they are common traits of provincial town life, are characteristic of the metropolis no longer. Nevertheless, the classes remained absolutely distinct, cut off from one another by chasms of custom and interest, and even law, which were never, save with the rarest exceptions, bridged over. The enactments which had been promulgated at the beginning of the reign to fix with rigid certainty the special garbs of the various ranks of the community, are sufficient to show to what extent the caste system, with its attendant prejudices and conventions, was still rooted deep in English life. The young ’prentice might haply make a fortune, and reach a position of great civic distinction. This much was open to him; but for his helpmeet in life he looked no higher than his master’s daughter. The successful merchant might even reach the Lord Mayor’s bench, but he was still a citizen, and laid no claim to set his foot within the charmed circle of gentle life. This condition of things is illustrated again and again in the plays of the time, as in Middleton’s “City Madam” and Dekker’s “Shoemaker’s Holiday.” There was practically no overlapping of interests, no intermingling of class with class. Money could do much, but it could not, as it will at present, purchase an entrance into the most select society; nor, in the matrimonial market of that day, was a coronet ever knocked down for a dower. But this is only one side of the question. If there was little class sympathy, there was little class rivalry also. Society was more diffuse than it is to-day—held together less firmly, but with less of the friction which is a necessary preliminary to that readjustment of social arrangements which the industrial movements of the modern world are tending slowly to bring about. The classes touched externally, but that was all. In spirit they stood aloof—each content to go its own way, to live its own life, but each, for the most part, equally ready to let the others freely do the same.
Of the various classes which went to the making of the population of Shakspere’s London, two only will here demand attention—the gentry and the citizens. Of course, within both of these great groups there were many grades, but time will not allow us to subdivide. Of course, too, beyond and outside these altogether, lay the seething mass of miscellaneous humanity—the vast fringe of the population—which then, as now, formed so dark and so dangerous an unabsorbed element in the city’s general life. Threads from this dingy and tangled social frilling were sometimes caught up and woven for picturesque purposes into the pattern of the plays of the time. But the epic of the submerged tenth was as yet undreamed of; and all this side of Elizabethan civilization must for the present be left out of view.
The citizens lived for the most part at their shops or places of business; the gentlefolk were more distributed. Some still had their habitations in the commercial portions of the city, and those of them who regularly lived in the country and came to town during term-time—which then constituted the London season,—were often content to find temporary lodging over some druggist’s or barber’s shop. But the exodus of the gentry and courtiers from the centres of trade and labor was already beginning, and the aristocratic neighborhoods were admittedly outside the walls. In “Greene’s Tu Quoque” when Lionel Nash is knighted, he delivers up his store to his head ’prentice, and announces his intention of moving the next day into the Strand; which may be taken as showing that for the retired tradesman,—and still more, therefore, for the gentleman or courtier,—a residence well removed from the city was deemed the proper thing.
It is difficult to speak in general terms of the houses of the time, since, naturally enough, the comfort and luxury of the domestic arrangements varied considerably as one passed up or down the social scale. A few broad statements may, however, be made. In the average dwelling the ceilings were covered with plaster of Paris, and the inner walls wainscoted and tapestried; the tapestry being worked with landscapes and figures often of a very elaborate character. This explains Lyly’s simile in “Midas”—“like arras, full of device.” Enough space was left for any one to hide between the arras and the wall—a fact, it will be remembered, frequently made use of by the Elizabethan dramatists, as by Webster in “The Duchess of Malfi,” where Cariola conceals herself behind the hanging to overhear what goes on between the Duchess and Antonio; and by Shakspere in “Henry the Fourth,” where Falstaff goes to sleep and has his pocket picked; and even more notably in the famous rat-killing scene in “Hamlet.” In addition, pictures were often used for decoration, and when valuable were protected by curtains. “I yet but draw the curtain; now to the picture,” says Monticelso in Webster’s “White Devil”; and, again, “We will draw the curtain and show you the picture,” says Olivia in “Twelfth Night,” as she removes her veil. The halls were lighted by candelabras or torch-bearers, and watch-lights, or night-lights, were in common use. At the foot of the master’s bed, rolled under during the day and drawn out at night, was a truckle-bed for his page. “Well, go thy ways for as sweet a breasted page as ever lay at his master’s feet in a truckle-bed,” says Dondolo in Middleton’s “More Dissemblers Besides Women.” The tables had flaps, and the floors were strewn with rushes, for carpets were as yet unknown. These rushes were renewed for fresh-comers. “Strangers have green rushes, while daily guests are not worth a rush,” says Lyly, in “Sapho and Phao”—a remark in which, by the way, we are reminded of the origin of one of our familiar phrases. Brick was costly, and the buildings were mostly of wood; but a new fashion was just coming in—that of employing well-constructed stoves in place of the open, smoky fireplaces hitherto general. The houses were now, too, provided with glass for the windows, which had not been the case a hundred years before, horn or wicker lattice-work having been used for the purpose. But this new notion was opposed by William Stafford, who saw in it the symptom of growing fondness for what he contemptuously called foreign nick-nacks. Chimneys, too, of which some years before there had been a few specimens only in every large town, were now general in the ordinary dwellings of the middle classes. The old wooden platters were giving way to pewter, which, though still rare, was gradually coming into use. Tin spoons also were making their appearance. China, gold, and silver plate were to be seen on the tables of the wealthy, and Venetian glass was sometimes employed, though, as this was very expensive, many people still drank from their mugs of burnt stone. Instead of the straw bundle and log on which people had formerly been content to sleep, proper sheets, pillows, and bolsters were now employed; not, however, without incurring the ridicule or the wrath of lovers of the good old times and moralists of severe complexion. “What makes us so weak as we now are?” demands Sir Lionel, in “Greene’s Tu Quoque,” abusing the new generation with all the vigor of a hale old man. “A feather bed! What so unapt for exercise? A feather bed! What breeds such pains and aches in our bones? Why, a feather bed!” Yet houses were so scantily furnished that uninvited or unexpected guests often used to bring their own stools with them, a practice referred to by Massinger in his “Unnatural Combat,” where he speaks of those who, “like unbidden guests, bring their own stools.” Many of the household arrangements, especially in the way of sanitation, were from our own point of view still crude and primitive enough. But the age of Elizabeth, as regards domestic economy generally, was distinctly a period of progress, and we have only to compare the sixteenth century with the centuries which went before, to sympathize with old Harrison, when, dealing with this very matter, he exclaims in a kind of fervent rapture—“God be thankt for his good gifts!”