Chapter 13

STRATFORD AS IT WAS

Stratford in Shakespeare's time administered its own affairs in very complete fashion through the medium of a Guild, which was turned into a Municipal Corporation by Edward VI. It boasted bailiff, aldermen, burgesses and chamberlains, and the council met every month in the Guild Hall. Those who accepted office were liable to be heavily mulcted for non-attendance, for attending in mufti, for declining promotion to a more responsible office, or for telling the secrets of the council chamber to those who had no place in it. The Chapel of the Guild, the Guild Hall, and the Grammar School, in which boys were taught and disciplined in fashion that would shock our humanitarian instincts to-day, still exist. The bailiff or warden of Stratford was at one time John Shakespeare himself, and at another a subordinate colleague, who would have sat in judgment upon him in the days when the old man's liabilities were beginning to get the better of his assets, and he himself was no longer a man of importance. The rule of the City Guild or Corporation was paternal in an Elizabethan sense. Just as the schoolmaster did not spare the rod lest he should spoil the child, so the magnates of the corporation regarded their fellow-citizens as men and women to be admonished or encouraged, punished or praised, according to their behaviour. Food prices were fixed by the corporation; the adulteration of the people's supplies was made exceedingly difficult and dangerous. Men who lived ill were fined or expelled from Stratford's boundaries; scolding wives were sentenced to have their tempers sweetened by immersion from the ducking-stool in the clear, cold waters of Avon. Publicans were forced to conform to the local laws carefully framed to abolish public drunkenness. The stocks were waiting for the feet of drunkards, brawlers, and offenders against municipal regulations, and the whipping-post was always in evidence where the Market House now stands. Apprentices might not be out after nine o'clock at night. Attendance at church was obligatory, and he who blasphemed or used foul language found ample reason to regret his indiscretion. In short, the conduct of Stratford was of a kind more in keeping with the Puritan tradition than anything we can find in England to-day, but it was associated with real brotherly love, and a feeling of common citizenship, that held the town together. Those who have studied the early records of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community in England in the years following the successful intercession of Manasseh ben Israel with Oliver Cromwell, will hardly fail to note the striking similarity between the rules that governed Elizabethan corporations and those that governed those Jews who returned to England and lived their prosperous but dignified lives in the east end of London when the eighteenth century was as young as our own.

=SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE--STRATFORD-ON-AVON=

There was much to hold communities together in Elizabeth's time, much to encourage strength of purpose and resignation to troubles that were regarded as the manifestation of Divine Will, though in truth they were fruits of the people's ignorance. Unfortunately there was no real attempt to control them. Sanitation was unknown. The ground floors of the houses were of hard clay, covered with rushes; chimneys were not common. Refuse and garbage were placed in the open roads, not always in the special places appointed by the corporation. Pigs were kept close to the houses, and though the butchers were supposed to take the refuse of the slaughter-houses beyond the town, a strong wind would doubtless bring back infection. The corporation kept certain public places clean, and doubtless the citizens, or the most of them, did their best; but they had no knowledge of the price of uncleanliness, and in a town that was unpaved, undrained, and seldom cleaned, microbes must have enjoyed their life under conditions only familiar to those of us who have travelled through some of the remote cities of Africa and Asia, and known what it is to be literally unable to dismount from a horse. Street lighting was in its early infancy. In Shakespeare's time every man of substance was compelled to hang a lighted lantern outside his house from dusk to curfew, during a few weeks of midwinter, and that was all.

Of all these defects the lack of cleanliness was the vital one, and the consequences of the neglect or ignorance of the first laws of sanitation may be imagined. Plague was never far away. Every few years there would be a visitation, mild or severe, and there was no effective remedy known to the people. As in the time of the great plague of London, herbs and cooling drinks were employed, fresh air was in demand, and there was much burning of spices. Shakespeare was a baby in arms when a visitation of the plague gave nearly fifteen per cent. of the town's population to the graveyard or its substitute, the plague pit.

Now and again the Avon would overflow its banks and flood the surrounding country. Not only would such a disaster increase the ague and rheumatism that are never far removed from dwellers by the river-side, but a late summer flood might damage the crops on low-lying lands, or carry away corn that had been cut but not carted, and then, as Stratford was not readily accessible, the prices of food stuff would rise despite the corporation's efforts, and actual famine was not unknown.

Fires, too, were common. Doubtless a few arose from the overheating of corn in barns and stacks, and some from the absence of chimneys to so many houses. The corporation did what it could, but there were no resources adequate to deal with a conflagration, for all that the Avon ran at the foot of the town. They came to the conclusion in 1582 that the absence of chimneys was a fruitful source of disaster, and ordered every householder to build one. They also ordered every burgess to provide himself with a bucket. Looking back to the times, it is not easy to say that the corporation of Stratford was really backward; its members did all that the people of a little town in the heart of Warwickshire could have been expected to do, and there would seem to have been no lack of public spirit, no falling away from continuous endeavour, no shirking of onerous duties. Every man had his work to do in the public service, and those who failed were punished.

When we look round at our busy manufacturing towns in this year of grace, and remember how much we know of the best tradition of municipal work, can we say that, _mutatis mutandis_, the advantage is altogether with us? Plague and fire and flood have been overcome, but men and women live lives entirely undisciplined. Little or nothing binds the citizen to the State, and the adulteration of food has become so common that pure bread and pure beer are the exception, and the supervision of those who prepare the necessities of our daily life is much less strict than it was when old John Shakespeare, the poet's father, was Stratford's ale-taster, empowered to see, _inter alia_, that every baker sold a whole loaf of true weight for one penny.

But if the corporation ruled Stratford strictly in Elizabethan times, it encouraged all kinds of sport, to some of which the poet makes reference in his plays. Young and old knew the Maypole. Nine Men's Morris was another popular game, and Falstaff, referring to his treatment when he escaped from Ford's house disguised as the fat woman of Brentford, says, "Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipp'd top, I knew not what it was to be beaten, since lately." Goose-plucking was a particularly barbarous pastime. We know that hockey and football were played in Elizabethan England, and that the corporation of Stratford kept a bowling-alley at the municipality's expense for the free use of the town. Cock-fights were among the less reputable sports of the time, and bears or bulls were baited. Hunting, hawking, coursing, fishing, and the rest beguiled the leisure hours of those who had any, and the harvest festivals would have played their part. There were great fairs and open markets held at certain seasons of spring and summer. Within doors, cards and shovel-board would seem to have been the only kind of amusement that were not directly associated with social ceremonies.

Christening, marriage, and burial were all allied in the poet's time to more public exhibitions than obtain to-day, the wedding being preceded by a public betrothal ceremony, and the marriage itself being associated with a great many quaint customs if the contracting parties had the money wherewith to carry them out. Removed from touch with the outside world, seeing little of the life of big cities for themselves, the citizens of Stratford managed to get no small measure of simple and harmless enjoyment out of life, though even among the town council there were men whose liking for sack and good ale was notorious.

Players from London brought some added amusement in the summer, but as Stratford grew more and more puritanical, a very deliberate effort, already referred to in the preceding chapter, was made to penalise actors, and some years after Shakespeare's death it is recorded that the king's players were bribed by the corporation to leave the town without giving any performances. The gardens of Stratford were very productive. They were separated from each other by mud walls, and were carefully cultivated. Shakespeare delighted in his gardens and his plays speak of his sound knowledge of the gardener's craft. People who could afford to plant orchards took a pride in doing so; the poorer folk generally boasted a few fruit-trees, and gave no small part of their garden plot to raising herbs and simples for use against the various ailments that troubled them from time to time. The furniture in the house was primitive. Table, stools, a chair or two, and a bench would furnish a living-room. Carpets were not often met with; mattresses, bolsters, and pillows were stuffed with feathers. Sheets and table-cloths were of flax or hemp; dishes were of brass or pewter. Wooden trenchers and pewter spoons were in common use, and most houses held the necessary equipment for baking bread, brewing ale, and weaving wool. Cooking was primitive; good cooks were not required unless the occasion was an extraordinary one. People rose early and retired early; there was no temptation to be out late in filthy, ill-lighted streets, and bed was the only comfortable place in a house after nightfall. Doubtless the conditions were favourable to deep drinking among those who were not limited to the ale-house, and consequently could escape from the vigilant eye of authority.

The apprentice system was in vogue at Stratford in Shakespeare's time, and though the condition of apprentices was not always creditable to their employers, the system ensured a thorough knowledge of any business that a man sought to establish. The apprenticeship was a legal condition, precedent to setting up in business, and until a lad had fulfilled his indentures he could not open a shop on his own account or claim the rights of a freeman. Apprentices had their rights and privileges, including certain holidays, but they might not carry arms, might not visit ale-houses, and might not stay out after nine o'clock. For lads who did not care to settle down in business, or had not the means to establish themselves in one, there were other ways of securing a living. They could seek military service--there was always a demand for strong, athletic young men--or they could enter the big establishments of the great landowners, who employed scores of retainers, and, in peaceful times, did not overwork them. The wealthier lads went to the universities or to the metropolis, where no small proportion, freed from all restraint, went hopelessly to the bad. In Shakespeare's time, the Earl of Leicester, Lord Compton, Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, and a few others, were the chief men in the neighbourhood of Stratford to keep retainers in large numbers.

=SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL THEATRE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON=