Shakspeare and His Times [Vol. 2 of 2] Nathan Drake 4188 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Shakspeare and His Times
[Vol. 2 of 2]

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Shakspeare and His Times [Vol. 2 of 2]

Author: Nathan Drake

Release date: November 28, 2016 [eBook #53626]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53626

Credits: Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Lisa Reigel, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKSPEARE
AND HIS TIMES [VOL. 2 OF 2] ***

Transcriber's Notes: In footnotes and attributions,
commas and periods seem to be used interchangeably.
They remain as printed. Variations in spelling,
hyphenation, and accents remain as in the original
unless noted. A complete list of corrections as well as
other notes follows the text.

SHAKSPEARE
AND

HIS TIMES:
INCLUDING

THE BIOGRAPHY OF THE POET;
CRITICISMS ON HIS GENIUS AND WRITINGS; A NEW

CHRONOLOGY OF HIS PLAYS;

A DISQUISITION ON THE OBJECT OF HIS SONNETS;

AND

A HISTORY OF

THE MANNERS, CUSTOMS, AND AMUSEMENTS,

SUPERSTITIONS,

POETRY, AND ELEGANT LITERATURE OF HIS AGE.

By NATHAN DRAKE, M.D.
AUTHOR OF "LITERARY HOURS," AND OF "ESSAYS ON
PERIODICAL LITERATURE."

—— On the tip of his subduing tongue
All kind of arguments and question deep,
All replication prompt, and reason strong,
For his advantage still did wake and sleep:
To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,
He had the dialect and different skill,
Catching all passions in his craft of will;
That he did in the general bosom reign
Of young, of old; and sexes both enchanted.

The very age and body of the time, his form and pressure.

Shakspeare.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.

LONDON:
PRINTED FOR T. CADELL AND W. DAVIES, IN THE STRAND.
1817.

Printed by A. Strahan,
Printers-Street, London.

CONTENTS
OF

THE SECOND VOLUME.

PART II. continued.
SHAKSPEARE IN LONDON.

CHAP. V.
Dedications of Shakspeare's Venus and Adonis, and Rape of
Lucrece, to the Earl of Southampton—Biographical Sketch of
the Earl—Critique on the Poems of Shakspeare. Page 1

CHAP. VI.
On the Dress and Modes of Living, and the Manners and Customs
of the Inhabitants of the Metropolis, during the Age of
Shakspeare. 87

CHAP. VII.
On the Diversions of the Metropolis, and the Court—The Stage;
its Usages and Economy. 168

CHAP. VIII.

A Brief View of Dramatic Poetry, from the Birth of Shakspeare to
the Period of his Commencement as a Writer for the Stage,
about the Year 1590; with Critical Notices of the Dramatic
Poets who flourished during that Interval. 227

CHAP. IX.
Period of Shakspeare's Commencement as a Dramatic Poet—
Chronological Arrangement of his genuine Plays—
Observations on Pericles; on the Comedy of Errors; on Love's
Labour's Lost; on Henry the Sixth, Part the First; on Henry
the Sixth, Part the Second; and on A Midsummer-Night's

Dream—Dissertation on the Fairy Mythology, and on the
Modifications which it received from the Genius of
Shakspeare. 256

CHAP. X.
Observations on Romeo and Juliet; on the Taming of the Shrew;
on The Two Gentlemen of Verona; on King Richard the
Third; on King Richard the Second; on King Henry the
Fourth, Parts First and Second; on The Merchant of Venice;
and on Hamlet—Dissertation on the Agency of Spirits and
Apparitions, and on the Ghost in Hamlet. 356

CHAP. XI.
Observations on King John; on All's Well that Ends Well; on 419
King Henry the Fifth; on Much Ado about Nothing; on As
You Like It; on Merry Wives of Windsor; on Troilus and
Cressida; on Henry the Eighth; on Timon of Athens; on
Measure for Measure; on King Lear; on Cymbeline; on

Macbeth—Dissertation on the Popular Belief in Witchcraft
during the Age of Shakspeare, and on his Management of this
Superstition in the Tragedy of Macbeth.

CHAP. XII.
Observations on Julius Cæsar; on Antony and Cleopatra; on
Coriolanus; on The Winter's Tale; on The Tempest—
Dissertation on the General Belief of the Times in the Art of
Magic, and on Shakspeare's Management of this Superstition
as exhibited in The Tempest—Observations on Othello; on
Twelfth Night, and on the Plays ascribed to Shakspeare—
Summary of Shakspeare's Dramatic Character. 490

CHAP. XIII.
A Brief View of Dramatic Poetry, and its Cultivators, during
Shakspeare's Connection with the Stage. 556

CHAP. XIV.
The Biography of Shakspeare continued to the Close of his
Residence in London. 581

PART III.
SHAKSPEARE IN RETIREMENT.

CHAP. I.
Anecdotes relative to Shakspeare during his Retirement at
Stratford. 603

CHAP. II.
The Death of Shakspeare—Observations on his Will—On the
Disposition and Moral Character of Shakspeare—On the
Monument erected to his Memory, and on the Engraving of
him prefixed to the first Folio Edition of his Plays—
Conclusion. 611
Appendix. 625

SHAKSPEARE AND HIS TIMES.

PART II.
SHAKSPEARE IN LONDON.

CHAPTER V.

DEDICATIONS OF SHAKSPEARE'S VENUS AND ADONIS
AND RAPE OF LUCRECE TO THE EARL OF
SOUTHAMPTON—BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE
EARL—CRITIQUE ON THE POEMS OF SHAKSPEARE.
Shakspeare's dedication of his Venus and Adonis to the Earl of
Southampton, in 1593; the accomplishments, the liberality, and the virtues
of this amiable nobleman, and the substantial patronage which, according to
tradition, he bestowed upon our poet, together claim for him, in this place, a
more than cursory notice as to life and character.
Thomas Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton, and Baron of Titchfield, was
born on the sixth of October, 1573. His grandfather had been created an
Earl in the reign of Henry the Eighth; and his father, who married Mary, the
daughter of Anthony, first Viscount of Montague, was a strenuous supporter
of the rights of Mary Queen of Scots. Just previous to the completion of his
eighth year, he suffered an irreparable loss by the death of his father, on the
4th of October, 1581. His mother, however, appears to have been by no
means negligent of his education; for he was early sent to Cambridge, being
matriculated there when only twelve years old, on the 11th of December,
1585. He was admitted of St. John's College, where, on the 6th of June,
1589, he took his degree of Master of Arts, and, after a residence of nearly
five years in the University, he finally left it for Town, to complete his
course of studies at Gray's Inn, of which place, in June, 1590, he had
entered himself a member.

The circumstances which, so shortly after Lord Southampton's arrival in
London, induced Shakspeare to select him as his patron, may, with an
assurance almost amounting to certainty, be ascribed to the following event.
Not long after the death of her husband, Lady Southampton married Sir
Thomas Heneage, treasurer of the chamber, an office which necessarily led
him into connection with actors and dramatic writers. Of this intercourse
Lord Southampton, at the age of seventeen, was very willing to avail
himself, and his subsequent history evinces, that, throughout life, he
retained a passionate attachment to dramatic exhibitions. No stronger proof,
indeed, can be given of his love for the theatre, than what an anecdote
related by Rowland Whyte affords us, who, in a letter to Sir Robert Sydney,
dated October 11th, 1599, tells his correspondent, that "my Lord
Southampton and Lord Rutland come not to the Court (at Nonesuch). The
one doth but very seldome. They pass away the tyme in London merely in
going to plaies EVERY DAY."[2:A]

To a young nobleman thus inclined, imbued with a keen relish for
dramatic poetry, who was ardent in his thirst for fame, and liberal in the
encouragement of genius, it was natural for our poet to look not only with
hope and expectation, but with enthusiastic regard. To Lord Southampton,
therefore, though only nineteen years old, Shakspeare, in his twenty-ninth
year[2:B], dedicated his Venus and Adonis, "the first heire of his invention."
The language of this dedication, however, indicates some degree of
apprehension as to the nature of its reception, and consequently proves that
our author was not at this period assured of His Lordship's support; for it
commences thus:—"Right Honorable, I know not how I shall offend in
dedicating my unpolisht lines to your Lordship;" and he adds in the opening
of the next clause, "onely if your Honor seeme but pleased, I account
myselfe highly praised." These timidities appear to have vanished in a very
short period: for our author's dedication to the same nobleman of his Rape
of Lucrece, which was entered on the Stationers' Books on May 9th, 1594,

and published almost immediately afterwards, speaks a very different
language, and indicates very plainly that Shakspeare had already
experienced the beneficial effects of His Lordship's patronage. Gratitude
and confidence, indeed, cannot express themselves in clearer terms than
may be found in the diction of this address:—"The love I dedicate to Your
Lordship," says the bard, "is without end.—The warrant I have of your
Honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it
assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours, what I have to doe is
yours, being part in all I have devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my
duety would shew greater; meane time, as it is, it is bound to your
Lordship." Words more declaratory of obligation it would not be easy to
select, and we shall be justified, therefore, in inferring, that Lord
Southampton had conferred upon Shakspeare, in consequence of his
dedication to him of Venus and Adonis, some marked proof of his kindness
and protection.
Tradition has recorded, among other instances of this nobleman's
pecuniary bounty, that he, at one time, gave Shakspeare a thousand pounds,
in order to complete a purchase, a sum which in these days would be equal
in value to more than five times its original amount.[3:A] This may be, and
probably is, an exaggeration; but that it has been founded on the well-known
liberality of Lord Southampton to Shakspeare; on a certain knowledge that
donations had passed from the peer to the poet, there can be little doubt. It
had become the custom of the age to reward dedication by pecuniary
bounty, and that Lord Southampton was diffusively and peculiarly generous
in this mode of remuneration, we have the express testimony of Florio,
who, dedicating his World of Words to this nobleman in 1598, says:—"In
truth, I acknowledge an entire debt, not only of my best knowledge, but of
all; yea of more than I know, or can to your bounteous lordship, in whose
pay and patronage I have lived some years; to whom I owe and vowe the
years I have to live. But, as to me, and many more, the glorious and

gracious sunshine of your honour hath infused light and life." Here, if we
except the direct confession relative to "pay," the language is similar to, and
not more emphatically expressive of gratitude than was Shakspeare's; and
that, under the phrase "many more," Florio meant to include our poet, we
may, without scruple, infer. To an actor, to a rising dramatic writer, to one
who had placed the first fruits of his genius under his protection, and who
was still contending with the difficulties incident to his situation, the taste,
the generosity, and the feeling of Lord Southampton, would naturally be
attracted; and the donation which, in all probability, followed the dedication
of Venus and Adonis, we have reason, from the voice of tradition, to
conclude, was succeeded by many, and still more important, proofs of His
Lordship's favour.
The patronage of literature, however, was not the only inclination which,
at this early period of life, His Lordship cultivated with enthusiasm; the
year subsequent to his receival of Shakspeare's dedication of The Rape of
Lucrece, saw him entangled in all the perplexities of love, and the devoted
slave of the faire Mrs. Varnon. Of this attachment, which was thwarted by
the caprice of Elizabeth, Rowland Whyte, in a letter to Sir Henry Sydney,
dated September 23rd, 1595, writes in the following terms:—"My Lord
Southampton doth with too much familiarity court the faire Mrs. Varnon,
while his friends, observing the Queen's humours towards my Lord of
Essex, do what they can to bring her to favour him; but it is yet in vain."[5:A]
This young lady, Elizabeth Vernon, was the cousin of the celebrated Earl of
Essex, between whom and Southampton differences had arisen, which this
passion for his fair relative dissipated for ever.[5:B]
Yet the fascinations of love could not long restrain the ardent spirit of
Lord Southampton. In 1597, when Lord Essex was appointed General of the
forces destined to act against the Azores, Southampton, at the age of
twenty-four, gallantly came forward as a volunteer, on board the Garland,
one of Her Majesty's best ships,—an offer which was soon followed by a

commission from Essex to command her. An opportunity speedily occurred
for the display of his courage; in an engagement with the Spanish fleet, he
pursued and sunk one of the enemy's largest men of war, and was wounded
in the arm, during the conflict.[5:C] Sir William Monson, one of the
Admirals of the expedition, tells us, that the Earl lost time in this chase,
which might have been better employed[5:D]; but his friend Essex appears to
have considered his conduct in a different light, and conferred upon him,
during his voyage, the honour of knighthood.
On his return to England, in October, 1597, he had the misfortune to find
that the Queen had embraced the opinion of Monson, rather than that of
Essex, and frowned with displeasure on the officer who had presumed to
pursue and sink a Spanish vessel, without orders from his commander; a
censure which was intended also to reach the General, with whom she was
justly offended for having assumed the direction of a service to which his
judgment and his talents were inadequate.
Nor was the immediately subsequent conduct of Southampton in the
least degree calculated to appease the anger of Elizabeth; he renewed his
proposals of marriage, and again without consulting her wishes; he
quarrelled with, and challenged the Earl of Northumberland, and compelled
her to issue a mandate in order to prevent their meeting; and one evening,
being engaged at play, in the presence-chamber, with Raleigh and some
other courtiers, they protracted their amusement beyond the hour of the
Queen's retirement to rest; and being warned by Willoughby, the officer in
waiting, to depart, Raleigh obeyed, but Southampton, indignant and easily
irritated, refused compliance, and, warm language ensuing, he struck
Willoughby, who was not backward in returning the blow. When the Queen,
the next morning, was apprised of this disgraceful scuffle, she applauded
Willoughby for his spirited conduct, adding, that "he had better have sent
Southampton to the porter's lodge, to see who durst have fetched him out."
[6:A]

This heedless and intemperate ebullition of passion, the result of youth
and inexperience, was atoned for by many sterling virtues of the head and
heart; and the career of dissipation was fortunately interrupted by His
Lordship's attention to his duty as a senator in the first place, and, secondly,
by an engagement to accompany Mr. Secretary Cecil on an embassy to
Paris. His introduction to parliamentary business began on the 24th of
October, 1597, and terminated, with the session, on the 8th of February
1598; and two days afterwards, he left London to commence his tour.
Previous to his quitting the capital, he, and his friends, Cobham and
Raleigh, thought it necessary to entertain his future fellow-traveller; and, on
this occasion, Southampton had recourse to his favourite amusement, the
drama; for it is recorded that they "severally feasted Mr. Secretary, before
his departure; and had plaies, and banquets."[7:A] The bare mention of this
excursion, however, had afforded extreme grief to the fair object of his
affections, who "passed her time in weeping[7:B];" and, in order to obviate
the apprehended consequences of his absence, and consequently her sorrow,
it had been secretly proposed that Lord Southampton should marry his
mistress before his departure.[7:C] Circumstances having prevented the
accomplishment of this plan, we are not surprised to learn that when His
Lordship departed, on the 10th of February 1598, he left "behind him a
most desolate gentlewoman, that almost wept out her fairest eyes."[7:D]
The travellers reached Paris on the 1st of March 1598, and on the 17th of
the same month, Cecil introduced his friend, at Angers, to that illustrious
monarch Henry the Fourth, telling His Majesty, that Lord Southampton
"was come with deliberation to do him service." Henry received the Earl
most graciously, and embraced him with many expressions of regard; and,
had not the peace of Vervins intervened, His Lordship would have ardently
seized the opportunity of serving the ensuing campaign under a general of
such unrivalled reputation.

In the course of November 1598, there is reason to suppose that this
enterprising nobleman returned to London[7:E]; soon after which event, his
union with Elizabeth Vernon took place. His bride was the daughter of John
Vernon of Hodnet, in the county of Salop, and she appears to have
possessed a large share of personal charms. A portrait of her was drawn by
Cornelius Jansen, which is said to have "the face and hands coloured with
incomparable lustre."[8:A] The unjustifiable resentment of the Queen,
however, rendered this connection, for a time, a source of much misery to
both parties. Her capricious tyranny was such, as to induce her to feel
offended, if any of her courtiers had the audacity to love or marry without
her knowledge or permission; and the result of what she termed His
Lordship's clandestine marriage, was the instant dismissal of himself and
his lady to a prison. How long their confinement was protracted, cannot
now be accurately ascertained; that it was long in the opinion of the Earl of
Essex, appears from an address of his to the Lords of Council, in which he
puts the following interrogation:—"Was it treason in my Lord of
Southampton to marry my poor kinswoman, that neither long
imprisonment, nor any punishment besides, that hath been usual, in like
cases, can satisfy, or appease[8:B]?" But we do know that it could not have
existed beyond March, 1599; for on the 27th of that month, Lord
Southampton accompanied his friend Essex to Ireland, where, immediately
on his arrival, he was appointed by the Earl, now Lord Deputy of that
country, his general of the horse.
This military promotion of Southampton is one among numerous proofs
of the imprudence of Essex, for it was not only without the Queen's
knowledge, but, as Camden has informed us, "clean contrary to his
instructions."[8:C] What was naturally to be expected, therefore, soon
occurred; Lord Southampton was, by the Queen's orders, deprived of his
commission, in the August following, and on the 20th of September, 1599,
he revisited London, where, apprehensive of the displeasure of Her Majesty,

he absented himself from court, and endeavoured to soothe his inquietude
by the attractions of the theatre, to which his ardent admiration of the
genius of Shakspeare now daily induced him to recur.
The resentment of the Queen, however, though not altogether appeased,
soon began to subside; and in December 1599, when Lord Mountjoy was
commissioned to supersede Essex in the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland, Lord
Southampton was one of the officers selected by Her Majesty to attend him.
Farther than this she refused to condescend; for, though His Lordship
solicited for some weeks the honour of kissing her hand, and was supported
in this request by the influence of Cecil, he solicited in vain, and was at
length compelled to rest satisfied with the expression of her wishes for the
safety of his journey.
One unpleasant consequence of his former transient campaign in Ireland,
had been a quarrel with the Lord Grey, who acting under him as a colonel
of horse had, from the impetuosity of youthful valour, attacked the rebel
force without orders; a contempt of subordination which had been punished
by his superior with a night's imprisonment.[9:A] The fiery spirit of Grey
could not brook even this requisite attention to discipline, and he sent
Southampton a challenge, which the latter, on his departure for Ireland, in
April 1600, accepted, by declaring, that he would meet Lord Grey in any
part of that country. The Queen, however, for the present arrested the
combat; but the animosity was imbittered by delay, and Lord Southampton
felt it necessary to his character to break off his military engagements,
which had conferred upon him the reputation of great bravery and
professional skill, and had received the marked approval of the Lord
Deputy, to satiate the resentment of Grey, who had again called him to a
meeting, and fixed its scene in the Low Countries.
Of this interview we know nothing more than that it proved so
completely abortive, that, shortly afterwards, Lord Grey attacked

Southampton as he rode through the streets of London, an outrage which
affords but a melancholy trait of the manners of the age, though punished
on the spot by the immediate committal of the perpetrator to prison.
It had been happy, however, for the fame and repose of Southampton,
had this been the only unfortunate contest in which he engaged; but he was
recalled by Essex from the Low Countries, in order to assist him in his
insurrectionary movements against the person and government of his
sovereign. Blinded by the attachments of friendship, which he cultivated
with enthusiastic warmth, and indignant at the treatment which he had
lately received from the Queen, he too readily listened to the treasonable
suggestions of Essex, and became one of the conspirators who assembled at
the house of this nobleman on the 8th of February 1601. Here they took the
decisive step of imprisoning the Queen's privy counsellors who had been
sent to enquire into the purport of their meeting, and from this mansion they
sallied forth, with the view of exciting the citizens to rebellion. An
enterprise so criminal, so rash, and chimerical, immediately met the fate
which it merited; and the trial of Essex and Southampton for high treason
took place on the 19th of February, when, both being found guilty, the
former, as is well known, expiated his offence by death, while the latter,
from the minor culpability of his views, from the modesty and contrition
which he exhibited in his defence, and from the intercession of Cecil and
the peers, obtained a remission of the sentence affecting his life, but was
condemned to imprisonment in the Tower.
We have more than once mentioned the great partiality of Lord
Southampton to dramatic literature, and it is somewhat remarkable that this
partiality should have been rendered subservient to the machinations of
treason; for Bacon tells us, that "the afternoon before the rebellion, Merick,
(afterwards the defender of Essex-house,) with a great company of others,
that afterwards were all in the action, had procured to be played before
them the play of deposing King Richard the Second;—when it was told him

by one of the players that the play was old, and they should have loss in
playing it, because few would come to it, there were forty shillings
extraordinary given to play it, and so thereupon played it was."[11:A] It
appears from the State Trials, vol. vii. p. 60., that the player to whom the
forty shillings were given, was Augustine Philippes, one of the patentees of
the Globe playhouse with Shakspeare, in 1603.
The term old applied to this play, which, according to the report of the
Queen, "was played forty times in open streets and houses[11:B]," has
induced Dr. Farmer and Mr. Tyrwhitt to conclude that a play entitled
Richard the Second, or Henry the Fourth, existed before Shakspeare's
dramas on these subjects. This position, however, is dissented from by Mr.
Chalmers, who says,—"In opposition to Farmer and Tyrwhitt, I hold,
though I have a great respect for their memories, that it was illogical to
argue, from a nonentity, against an entity; that as no such play as the Henry
IV. which they spoke of had ever appeared, while Shakspeare's Richard II.
was apparent to every eye, it was inconsequential reasoning in them to
prefer the first play to the last: and I am, therefore, of opinion, that the play
of deposing Richard II. which was seditiously played on the 7th of February
1600-1, was Shakspeare's Richard II., that had been originally acted in
1596, and first printed in 1597."[11:C]
This opinion of Mr. Chalmers will be much strengthened when we
reflect that Lord Southampton's well-known attachment to the muse of
Shakspeare, would almost certainly induce him to prefer the play written by
his favourite poet to the composition of an obscure, and, without doubt, a
very inferior writer.
The death of Elizabeth terminated the confinement and the sufferings of
Lord Southampton. No sooner had James acceded to the throne, than he
sent an order for his release from the Tower, which took place on the 10th
of April, 1603, and accompanied it with a request that he would meet him

on his way to England. This might be considered as a certain presage of
future favours, and was, indeed, speedily followed, not only by the reversal
of his attainder, and the restoration of his property, but by an accumulation
of honours. He was immediately appointed master of the game to the
Queen; a pension of six hundred pounds per annum was allotted to his lady;
in July, 1603, he was installed a knight of the garter, and created captain of
Isle of Wight and of Carisbrooke Castle, and in the following Spring he was
constituted Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire, and was chosen by the King as
his companion in a journey to Royston.
This flow of good fortune was, however, transiently impeded by the
jealousy of James, who, stimulated by the machinations of some of his
courtiers, envious of the returning prosperity of the Earl[12:A], was led to
suspect that an improper intimacy had taken place between Southampton
and his Queen; a charge of disaffection to His Majesty was, therefore,
brought against His Lordship, and he was apprehended towards the close of
June, 1604; but not the smallest proof of his disloyalty having been
substantiated, he was immediately released, and as immediately retaken into
favour.
Of his perfect reinstatement, indeed, in the affections of James we
possess a decided proof. Rowland Whyte, writing to Lord Shrewsbury, on
the 4th of March, 1604, says,—"My La. Southampton was brought to bed
of a young Lord upon St. David's Day (March 1st) in the morning; a St. to
be much honored by that howse for so great a blessing, by wearing a leeke
for ever upon that day."[12:B] Now this child was christened at court on the
27th of the same month, "the King, and Lord Cranburn, with the Countess
of Suffolk, being gossips[13:A];" an honour which was followed, in June,
1606, by a more substantial mark of regard, the appointment of His
Lordship to be Warden of the New Forest, and Keeper of the Park of
Lindhurst.

In November, 1607, Lord Southampton lost his mother, who had been
wife successively to Henry Wriothesly Earl of Southampton, to Sir Thomas
Heneage, and to Sir William Hervey. We are told by Lord Arundel that she
"lefte the best of her stuffe to her sonne, and the greatest part to her
husband[13:B]"; this bequest, however, could not have been very ample, for
it did not obviate the necessity of her son's applying, shortly afterwards, to
trade and colonisation with the view of increasing his property. In 1609, he
was constituted a member of the first Virginia Company, took a most active
part in their concerns, and was the chief promoter of the different voyages
to America, which were undertaken as well for the purposes of discovery as
for private interest.
The warmth of temper which distinguished Lord Southampton in early
life, seems not to have been adequately repressed by time and experience;
he was ever prone to resentment, though not difficult to conciliate, and,
unhappily, the manners of the age were not such as to impose due restraint
on the tumultuary passions. A quarrel with Lord Montgomery, on a trifling
occasion, which occurred in April, 1610, is but too striking an illustration of
these remarks; "they fell out at tennis," relates Winwood, "where the rackets
flew about their ears, but the matter was compounded by the King, without
further bloodshed[13:C];" a passage, the close of which proves that they had
fought and wounded each other with the instruments of their amusement!
We speedily recognise Lord Southampton, however, acting in a manner
more suitable to his station and character; on the 4th of June, 1610, he
officiated as carver at the magnificent festival which was given in honour of
young Henry's assumption of the title of Prince of Wales; and in July, 1613,
we find His Lordship entertaining the King at his house in the New Forest,
whither he had returned from an expedition to the continent, expressly for
this purpose, and under the expectation of receiving a royal visit. After
discharging this duty to his sovereign, he again left his native country, and

was present, in the following year, with Lord Herbert of Cherbury, at the
siege of Rees, in the dutchy of Cleve.
It was at this period that his reputation as a patron of literature, attained
its highest celebrity, and it is greatly to be desired that tradition had enabled
us to dwell more minutely on his intercourse with the learned. His bounty
to, and encouragement of, Shakspeare have conferred immortality on his
name; to Florio, we have seen, he extended a durable and efficient support;
Brathwayt, in his dedication of his "Scholar's Medley," 1614, calls him
"learnings best favourite;" and in 1617, he contributed very liberally to
relieve the distresses of Minsheu, the author of "The Guide to Tongues."
Doubtless, had we more ample materials for his life, these had not been the
only instances of his munificence to literary talent.
Still further promotion awaited this accomplished nobleman. When
James visited Scotland, in 1617, he accompanied his sovereign, and
rendered himself so acceptable by his courtesy and care, that, on the 19th of
April, 1619, he was rewarded by the confidential situation of a privy-
counsellor, an honour which he had long anxiously held in view.
This completion of his wishes, however, was not attended with the result
which he had so sanguinely expected. He found himself unable, from
principle, to join in the measures of the court, and the opposition which he
now commenced against the King and his ministers, had, in a mind so
ardent, a natural tendency to excess. In 1620, and the two following years,
he was chosen, contrary to the wishes of government, treasurer of the
Virginia Company, an office of great weight and responsibility, but to which
his zeal and activity in forwarding the views of that corporation gave him a
just claim. Such, indeed, was the sense which the company entertained of
his merits, that his name was annexed to several important parts of Virginia;
as, for instance, Southampton-hundred, Hampton-roads, &c.

Whilst he opposed the court merely in its commercial arrangements, no
personal inconvenience attended his exertions; but when, in the session of
parliament which took place towards the commencement of the year 1621,
he deemed it necessary to withstand the unconstitutional views of ministers,
he immediately felt the arm of power. He had introduced with success a
motion against illegal patents; and during the sitting of the 14th of March,
so sharp an altercation occurred between himself and the Marquis of
Buckingham, that the interference of the Prince of Wales was necessary to
appease the anger of the disputants.
This stormy discussion, and His Lordship's junction with the popular
party, occasioned so much suspicion on the part of government, that on the
16th of June, twelve days after the prorogation of parliament, he was
committed to the custody of the Dean of Westminster; nor was it until the
18th of the subsequent July, that he was permitted to return to his house at
Titchfield, under a partial restraint, nor until the first of September, that he
was entirely liberated.
Unawed, however, by this unmerited persecution, and supported by a
numerous and respectable party, justly offended at the King's pusillanimity
in tamely witnessing his son-in-law's deprivation of the Palatinate, he came
forward, with augmented activity, in the parliament of 1624, which opened
on the 9th of February. Here he sat on several committees; and when James,
on the 5th of the June following, found himself compelled to relinquish his
pacific system, and to enter into a treaty with the States-General, granting
them permission to raise four regiments in this country, he, unfortunately
for himself and his son, procured the colonelcy of one of them.[15:A]
Being under the necessity of taking up their winter-quarters at Rosendale
in Holland, the Earl, and his eldest son Lord Wriothesly, were seized with a
burning fever; "the violence of which distemper," says Wilson, "wrought
most vigorously upon the heat of youth, overcoming the son first, and the

drooping father, having overcome the fever, departed from Rosendale with
an intention to bring his sons body to England; but at Bergen-op-zoom he
died of a lethargy in the view and presence of the Relator, and were both in
one small bark brought to Southampton."[16:A] The son expired on the 5th of
November, and his parent on the tenth, and they were both buried in the
sepulchre of their fathers at Titchfield, on Innocents' day, 1624.
Thus perished, in the fifty-second year of his age, Henry Earl of
Southampton, leaving a widow, and three daughters, who, from a letter
preserved in the Cabala, appear to have been in confined circumstances;
this epistle is from the Lord Keeper Williams to the Duke of Buckingham,
dated Nov. 7th, 1624, and requesting of that nobleman "his grace and
goodness towards the most distressed widow and children of my Lord
Southampton."[16:B]
If we except a constitutional warmth and irritability of temper, and their
too common result, an occasional error of judgment, there did not exist,
throughout the reigns of Elizabeth and James, a character more truly
amiable, great, and good than was that of Lord Southampton. To have
secured, indeed, the reverence and affection of Shakspeare, was of itself a
sufficient passport to the purest fame; but the love and admiration which
attended him was general. As a soldier, he was brave, open, and
magnanimous; as a statesman remarkable for integrity and independence of
mind, and perhaps no individual of his age was a more enthusiastic lover, or
a more munificent patron, of arts and literature.
The virtues of his private life, as well as these features of his public
character, rest upon the authority of those who best knew him. To the
"noble" and "honourable disposition," ascribed to him by Shakspeare, who
affectionately declares, that he loves him "without end," we can add the
respectable testimony of Chapman, Sir John Beaumont, and Wither, all
intimately acquainted with him, and the second his particular friend.

Chapman, in one of his dedicatory sonnets, prefixed to his version of the
Iliad, not only applies to him the epithet "learned," but declares him to be
the "choice of all our country's noblest spirits[17:A];" and Beaumont, in an
Elegy on his death, tells us that his ambition was to draw

"A picture fit for this my noble friend,
That his dear name may not in silence die."

In a beautiful strain of enthusiasm, he informs us, that his verses are
calculated for posterity, and

——————————— "not for the present age;
For what man lives, or breathes on England's stage,
That knew not brave Southampton, in whose sight
Most plac'd their day, and in his absence night?"

He then proceeds to sketch his character at the different periods of his
life:—

"When he was young, no ornament of youth
Was wanting in him;"

and, in manhood, he shone

"As best in martial deedes and courtly sports;"

until riper age, and the cares of the world, having begun to shade his head
with silver hairs,

"His valiant fervour was not then decaide,
But joyn'd with counsell, as a further aide."

After this eulogium on the more ostensible features of his life, which
terminates with the assertion, that

"No pow'r, no strong persuasion could him draw
From that, which he conceiv'd as right and law,"

he presents a most pleasing delineation of his domestic conduct and
enjoyments:—

"When shall we in this realme a father finde
So truly sweet, or husband halfe so kinde?
Thus he enjoyde the best contents of life,
Obedient children, and a loving wife:
These were his parts in peace:"

and concludes with celebrating his love of letters and of literary men:—

"I keepe that glory last, which is the best,
The love of learning, which he oft exprest
By conversation, and respect to those
Who had a name in artes, in verse or prose."[19:A]

Wither seems to have been equally impressed with the estimable
character of Lord Southampton, and to have meditated a record of his life
and virtues; for, in an epigram addressed to him, with a copy of his "Abuses
Stript and Whipt," he exclaims,

"I ought to be no stranger to thy worth,
Nor let thy virtues in oblivion sleep:
Nor will I, if my fortunes give me time."[19:B]

In short, to adopt the language of an enthusiastic admirer of our dramatic
bard, "Southampton died as he had lived, with a mind untainted: embalmed

with the tears of every friend to virtue, and to splendid accomplishments: all
who knew him, wished to him long life, still lengthened with all happiness."
[19:C]

That a nobleman so highly gifted, most amiable by his virtues, and most
respectable by his talents and his taste, should have been strongly attached
to Shakspeare, and this attachment returned by the poet with equal fervour,
cannot excite much surprise; indeed, that more than pecuniary obligation
was the tie that connected Shakspeare with his patron, must appear from the
tone of his dedications, especially from that prefixed to the "Rape of
Lucrece," which breathes an air of affectionate friendship, and respectful
familiarity.[20:A] We should also recollect, that, according to tradition, the
great pecuniary obligation of Shakspeare to his patron, was much posterior
to the period of these dedications, being given for the purpose of enabling
the poet to make a purchase at his native town of Stratford, a short time
previous to his retirement thither.
It may, therefore, with safety be concluded, that admiration and esteem
were the chief motives which actuated Shakspeare in all the stages of his
intercourse with Lord Southampton, to whom, in 1593, we have found he
dedicated the "first heir of his invention."
Our reasons for believing that this poem was written in the interval
which occurred between the years 1587 and 1590, have been already given
in a former part of the work[20:B], and we shall here, therefore, only
transcribe the title page of the original edition, which, though entered in the
Stationers' books by Richard Field, on the 18th of April, 1593, was
supposed not to have been published before 1594, until Mr. Malone had the
good fortune to procure a copy from a provincial catalogue, perhaps the
only one remaining in existence[20:C]:—
"Venus and Adonis.

Vilia miretur Vulgus, mihi flavus Apollo,
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.
London. By Richard Field, and are to be solde at the Signe of the White
Greyhound, in Paules Church Yard. 1593."
This, the earliest offspring of our poet's prolific genius, consists of one
hundred and ninety-nine stanzas, each stanza including six lines, of which
the first four are in alternate rhime, and the fifth and sixth form a couplet.
Its length, indeed, is one of its principal defects; for it has led, not only to a
fatiguing circumlocution, in point of language, but it has occasioned the
poet frequently to expand his imagery into a diffuseness which sometimes
destroys its effect; and often to indulge in a strain of reflection more
remarkable for its subtlety of conceit, than for its appropriation to the
incidents before him. Two other material objections must be noticed, as
arising from the conduct of the poem, which, in the first place, so far as it
respects the character of Adonis, is forced and unnatural; and, in the second,
has tempted the poet into the adoption of language so meretricious, as
entirely to vitiate the result of any moral purpose which he might have had
in view.
These deductions being premised, we do not hesitate to assert, that the
Venus and Adonis contains many passages worthy of the genius of
Shakspeare; and that, as a whole, it is superior in poetic fervour to any
production of a similar kind by his contemporaries, anterior to 1587. It will
be necessary, however, where so much discrepancy of opinion has existed,
to substantiate the first of these assertions, by the production of specimens
which shall speak for themselves; and as the conduct and moral of the piece
have been given up as indefensible, these must, consequently, be confined
to a display of its poetic value; of its occasional merit with regard to
versification and imagery.

In the management of his stanza, Shakspeare has exhibited a more
general attention to accuracy of rhythm and harmony of cadence, than was
customary in his age; few metrical imperfections, indeed, are discoverable
either in this piece, or in any of his minor poems; but we are not limited to
this negative praise, being able to select from his first effort instances of
positive excellence in the structure of his verse.
Of the light and airy elegance which occasionally characterises the
composition of his Venus and Adonis, the following will be accepted as no
inadequate proofs:—

"Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear,
Or, like a fairy, trip upon the green,
Or, like a nymph, with long dishevel'd hair,
Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen.

—————

"If love have lent you twenty thousand tongues,
And every tongue more moving than your own,
Bewitching like the wanton mermaid's songs,
Yet from mine ear the tempting tune is blown."

To terminate each stanza with a couplet remarkable for its sweetness,
terseness, or strength, is a refinement almost peculiar to modern times; yet
Shakspeare has sometimes sought for, and obtained this harmony of close:
thus Venus, lamenting the beauty of Nature after the death of Adonis,
exclaims,

"The flowers are sweet, their colours fresh and trim;
But true-sweet beauty liv'd and dy'd with him;"

and again, when reproaching the apathy of her companion,—

"O learn to love; the lesson is but plain,
And, once made perfect, never lost again."

Nor are there wanting passages in which energy and force are very
skilfully combined with melody and rhythm; of the subsequent extracts,
which are truly excellent for their vigorous construction, the lines in Italics
present us with the point and cadence of the present day. Venus,
endeavouring to excite the affection of Adonis, who is represented

——————— "more lovely than a man,
More white and red than doves or roses are,"

tells him,

"I have been woo'd, as I entreat thee now,
Even by the stern and direful god of war,
Whose sinewy neck in battle ne'er did bow—
Over my altars hath he hung his lance,
His batter'd shield, his uncontrolled crest,
And for my sake hath learn'd to sport and dance,
To coy, to wanton, dally, smile, and jest:"

and, on finding her efforts fruitless, she bursts forth into the following
energetic reproach:—

"Fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone,
Well-painted idol, image, dull and dead,
Statue, contenting but the eye alone,
Thing like a man, but of no woman bred."

The death of Adonis, however, banishes all vestige of resentment, and,
amid numerous exclamations of grief and anguish, gives birth to prophetic

intimations of the hapless fate of all succeeding attachments:—

"Since thou art dead, lo! here I prophesy,
Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend;
It shall be waited on with jealousy,
Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end;—

It shall suspect, where is no cause of fear;
It shall not fear, where it should most mistrust;
It shall be merciful, and too severe,
And most deceiving when it seems most just;—

It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud,
And shall be blasted in a breathing-while;
The bottom poison, and the top o'er-straw'd
With sweets, that shall the sharpest sight beguile:
The strongest body shall it make most weak,
Strike the wise dumb, and teach the fool to speak."

These passages are not given with the view of impressing upon the mind
of the reader, that such is the constant strain of the versification of the Venus
and Adonis; but merely to show, that, while in narrative poetry he equals his
contemporaries in the general structure of his verse, he has produced, even
in his earliest attempt, instances of beauty, melody, and force, in the
mechanism of his stanzas, which have no parallel in their pages. In making
this assertion, it must not be forgotten, that we date the composition of
Venus and Adonis anterior to 1590, that the comparison solely applies to
narrative poetry, and consequently that all contest with Spenser is
precluded.
It now remains to be proved, that the merits of this mythological story
are not solely founded on its occasional felicity of versification; but that in

description, in the power of delineating, with a master's hand, the various
objects of nature, it possesses more claims to notice than have hitherto been
allowed.
After the noble pictures of the horse which we find drawn in the book of
Job, and in Virgil, few attempts to sketch this spirited animal can be
expected to succeed; yet, among these few, impartial criticism may demand
a station for the lines below:—

"Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds,
And now his woven girts he breaks asunder,
The bearing earth with his hard hoof he wounds,
Whose hollow womb resounds like heaven's thunder.—

His ears up prick'd; his braided hanging mane
Upon his compass'd crest now stands on end;
His nostrils drink the air, and forth again,
As from a furnace, vapours doth he send:—

Sometimes he trots, as if he told the steps,
With gentle majesty, and modest pride:
Anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps,
As who should say, lo! thus my strength is try'd.—

Look, when a painter would surpass the life,
In limning out a well-porportion'd steed,
His art's with Nature's workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living should exceed;
So did this horse excell a common one,
In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone.

Round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,

Broad-breast, full eyes, small head, and nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide."
Venus, apprehensive for the fate of Adonis, should he attempt to hunt the
boar, endeavours to dissuade him from his purpose, by drawing a most
formidable description of that savage inmate of the woods, and by painting,
on the other hand, the pleasures to be derived from the pursuit of the hare.
The danger necessarily incurred from attacking the former, and the various
efforts by which the latter tries to escape her pursuers, are presented to us
with great fidelity and warmth of colouring.

"Thou had'st been gone, quoth she, sweet boy, ere this,
But that thou told'st me, thou would'st hunt the boar,
O be advis'd; thou know'st not what it is
With javelin's point a churlish swine to gore,
Whose tushes never-sheath'd he whetteth still,
Like to a mortal butcher, bent to kill.

On his bow back he hath a battle set
Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes;
His eyes, like glow-worms, shine when he doth fret;
His snout digs sepulchres where-e'er he goes;
Being mov'd, he strikes whate'er is in his way,
And whom he strikes, his crooked tushes slay.

His brawny sides, with hairy bristles armed,
Are better proof than thy spear's point can enter;
His short thick neck cannot be easily harmed;
Being ireful, on the lion he will venture.—

But if thou needs wilt hunt, be rul'd by me;

Uncouple at the timorous flying hare,
Or at the fox, which lives by subtlety,
Or at the roe, which no encounter dare:
Pursue these fearful creatures o'er the downs,
And on thy well-breath'd horse keep with thy hounds.

And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,
Mark the poor wretch to overshoot his troubles,
How he out-runs the wind, and with what care
He cranks and crosses, with a thousand doubles:—

Sometime he runs among the flock of sheep,
To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell;
And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,
To stop the loud pursuers in their yell;
And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer;
Danger deviseth shifts; wit waits on fear:

For there his smell with others being mingled,
The hot scent-snuffling hounds are driven to doubt,
Ceasing their clamorous cry till they have singled
With much ado the cold fault cleanly out;
Then do they spend their mouths: Echo replies,
As if another chase were in the skies.

By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,
To hearken if his foes pursue him still;
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;
And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore-sick, that hears the passing bell.

Then shall thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch
Turn, and return, indenting with the way;
Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch,
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay."
This poem abounds with similes, many of which include miniature
sketches of no small worth and beauty. A few of these shall be given, and
they will not fail to impart a favourable impression of the fertility and
resources of the rising bard. The fourth and fifth, which we have
distinguished by Italics, more especially deserve notice, the former
representing a minute piece of natural history, and the latter describing in
words adequate to their subject, one of the most terrible convulsions of
nature.

———————————— "as one on shore
Gazing upon a late-embarked friend,
Till the wild waves will have him seen no more,
Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend."

———

——————— "as one that unaware
Hath dropp'd a precious jewel in the flood."

———

"Or 'stonish'd as night-wanderers often are,
Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood."

———

"Or, as the snail, whose tender horns being hit,
Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain."

———

"As when the wind, imprison'd in the ground,
Struggling for passage, earth's foundation shakes."
We shall close these extracts from the Venus and Adonis, with two
passages which form a striking contrast, and which prove that the author
possessed, at the commencement of his career, no small portion of those
powers which were afterwards to astonish the world; powers alike
unrivalled either in developing the terrible or the beautiful.

"And therefore hath she bribed the Destinies,
To cross the curious workmanship of nature,
To mingle beauty with infirmities,
And pure perfection with impure defeature;
Making it subject to the tyranny
Of sad mischances and much misery;

As burning fevers, agues pale and faint,
Life-poisoning pestilence, and frenzies wood,
The marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint
Disorder breeds by heating of the blood:
Surfeits, impostumes, grief, and damn'd despair—

And not the least of all these maladies,
But in one minute's sight brings beauty under—
As mountain snow melts with the mid-day sun."

———

"Lo! here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast

The sun ariseth in his majesty;
Who doth the world so gloriously behold,
That cedar tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.

Venus salutes him with this fair good morrow:
O thou clear god, and patron of all light,
From whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow
The beauteous influence that makes him bright."[27:A]
If we compare the Venus and Adonis of Shakspeare with its classical
prototypes; with the Epitaphium Adonidis of Bion, and the beautiful
narrative of Ovid, which terminates the tenth book of his Metamorphoses,
we must confess the inferiority of the English poem, to the former in
pathos, and to the latter in elegance; but if we contrast it with the
productions of its own age, it cannot fail of being allowed a large share of
relative merit. It has imbibed, indeed, too many of the conceits and
puerilities of the period in which it was produced, and it has lost much
interest by deviating from tradition; for, as Mr. Steevens has remarked, "the
common and more pleasing fable assures us, that

———— "when bright Venus yielded up her charms,
The blest Adonis languish'd in her arms;"[28:A]

yet the passages which we have quoted, and the general strain of the poem,
are such as amply to account for the popularity which it once enjoyed.
That this was great, that the work was highly valued by poetic minds,
and, as might be supposed, from the nature of its subject, the favourite of
the young, the ardent, and susceptible, there are not wanting several
testimonies. In 1595, John Weever had written at the age of nineteen, as he
informs us, a collection of Epigrams, which he published in 1599[28:B]; of
these the twenty-second is inscribed Ad Gulielmum Shakspeare, and

contains a curious though quaint encomium on some of the poet's earliest
productions:—

"Honie tong'd Shakspeare, when I saw thine issue,
I swore Apollo got them, and none other,
Their rosie-tainted features clothed in tissue,
Some heaven-born goddesse said to be their mother.
Rose-cheeckt Adonis with his amber tresses,
Faire fire-hot Venus charming him to love her,
Chaste Lucretia virgine-like her dresses,
Proud lust-stung Tarquine seeking still to prove her."[28:C]

In a copy of Speght's edition of Chaucer, which formerly belonged to Dr.
Gabriel Harvey, this physician, the noted opponent of Nash, has inserted the
following remarks:—"The younger sort take much delight in Shakspeare's
Venus and Adonis; but his Lucrece, and his tragedy of Hamlet Prince of
Denmarke, have it in them to please the wiser sort, 1598."[29:A]
Meres, also, in his "Wit's Treasury," published in the same year with the
above date, draws a parallel between Ovid and Shakspeare, resulting from
the composition of this piece and his other minor poems. "As the soule of
Euphorbus," he observes, "was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweete
wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakspeare,
witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred sonnets among his
private friends, &c."[29:B]
A third tribute, and of a similar kind, was paid to the early efforts of our
author in 1598, by Richard Barnefield, from which it must be inferred that
the versification of Shakspeare was considered by his contemporaries as
pre-eminently sweet and melodious, a decision for which many stanzas in
the Venus and Adonis might furnish sufficient foundation:—

"And Shakspeare thou, whose honey-flowing vein,
(Pleasing the world,) thy praises doth contain,
Whose Venus, and whose Lucrece, sweet and chaste,
Thy name in fame's immortal book hath plac'd,
Live ever you, at least in fame live ever!
Well may the body die, but fame die never."[29:C]

That singularly curious old comedy, "The Returne from Parnassus,"
written in 1606, descanting on the poets of the age, introduces Shakspeare
solely on account of his miscellaneous poems, a striking proof of their
popularity; and, like his predecessors, the author characterises them by the
sweetness of their metre:

"Who loves Adonis love, or Lucre's rape,
His sweeter verse contaynes hart-robbing life,
Could but a graver subject him content,
Without love's foolish lazy languishment."[30:A]

It appears, likewise, from this extract, and will further appear from two
subsequent quotations, that the meretricious tendency of the Venus and
Adonis did not altogether escape the notice or the censure of the period
which produced it.
A more ample eulogium on the merits of Shakspeare's first production
issued from the press in 1607, in a poem composed by William Barksted,
and entitled, Mirrha the Mother of Adonis; or Lustes Prodigies, of which
the concluding lines thus appreciate the value of his model:—

"But stay, my Muse, in thine own confines keep,
And wage not warre with so deere lov'd a neighbour;
But having sung thy day-song, rest and sleep;
Preserve thy small fame, and his greater favor.

His song was worthie merit; Shakspeare, hee
Sung the faire blossome, thou the wither'd tree:
Laurel is due to him; his art and wit
Hath purchas'd it; cyprus thy brows will fit."[30:B]
A pasquinade on the literature of his times was published by John Davies
of Hereford in 1611; it first appeared in his "Scourge of Folly," under the
title of "A Scourge for Paper-Persecutors," and among other objects of his
satire Paper, here personified, is represented as complaining of the
pruriency of Shakspeare's youthful fancy.

"Another (ah, harde happe) mee vilifies
With art of love, and how to subtilize,
Making lewd Venus with eternal lines
To tie Adonis to her love's designes;
Fine wit is shewn therein: but finer 'twere,
If not attired in such bawdy geare."[31:A]

The charge of subtilizing which this passage conveys, may certainly be
substantiated against the minor poetry of our bard: no small portion of it is
visible in the Venus and Adonis; but the Rape of Lucrece is extended by its
admission to nearly a duplicate of what ought to have been its proper size.
To the quotations now given, as commemorative of Shakspeare's
primary effort in poetry, we shall add one, whose note of praise is, that our
author was equally excellent in painting lust or continency:—

"Shakspeare, that nimble Mercury thy brain
Lulls many-hundred Argus' eyes asleep,
So fit for all thou fashionest thy vein,
At the horse-foot fountain thou hast drunk full deep.
Virtue's or vice's theme to thee all one is;

Who loves chaste life, there's Lucrece for a teacher:
Who list read lust, there's Venus and Adonis
True model of a most lascivious lecher."[31:B]
From the admiration thus warmly expressed by numerous
contemporaries, even when connected with slight censure, it will, of course,
be inferred that the demand for re-impressions of the Venus and Adonis
would be frequent; and this was, indeed, the fact. In the year following the
publication of the editio princeps, there is reason to conclude that the
second impression was printed; for the poem appears again entered in the
Stationers' books on the 23d of June, 1594, by —— Harrison, sen.; unless
this entry be merely preliminary to the edition of 1596, which was printed
in small octavo, by Richard Field, for John Harrison.[32:A] Of the
subsequent editions, one was published, in 1600, by John Harrison, in
12mo.; another occurs in 1602, and, in 1607, the Venus and Adonis was
reprinted at Edinburgh, "which must be considered," remarks Mr. Beloe, "as
an indubitable proof, that at a very early period the Scotch knew and
admired the genius of Shakspeare."[32:B] The title-page of this edition has
the same motto as in the original impression; beneath it is a Phœnix in the
midst of flames, and then follows "Edinburgh. Printed by John Wreittoun,
are to bee sold in his shop, a little beneath the Salt Trone. 1607."
It is highly probable, that between the period of the Edinburgh copy, and
the year 1617, the date of the next extant edition, an intervening impression
may have been issued; Venus and Adonis, it should be noticed, is entered in
the Stationers' Register, by W. Barrett, Feb. 16. 1616; and the next entry is
by John Parker, March 8. 1619, preparatory perhaps to the edition which
appeared in 1620. In 1630, another re-print was called for, which was again
repeated in 1640, and in the various subsequent editions of our author's
poems.

The same favourable reception which accompanied the birth and
progress of the Venus and Adonis attended, likewise, the next poem which
our author produced, The Rape of Lucrece. This was printed in quarto, in
1594, by Richard Field, for John Harrison, and has a copious Argument
prefixed, which, as Mr. Malone remarks, is a curiosity, being, with the two
dedications to the Earl of Southampton, the only prose compositions of our
great poet (not in a dramatic form) now remaining.[33:A]
The Rape of Lucrece is written in stanzas of seven lines each; the first
four in alternate rhyme; the fifth line corresponding with the second and
fourth, and the sixth and seventh lines forming a couplet. To this
construction it is probable that Shakspeare was led through the popularity of
Daniel's Complaint of Rosamond, which was published in 1592, and
exhibits the same metrical system.
If we had just reason for condemning the prolixity of Venus and Adonis,
a still greater motive for similar censure will be found in the Rape of
Lucrece, which occupies no less than two hundred and sixty-five stanzas,
and, of course, includes one thousand eight hundred and fifty-five lines,
whilst the tale, as conducted by Ovid, is impressively related in about one
hundred and forty verses!
From what source Shakspeare derived his fable, whether through a
classic or a Gothic channel is uncertain. The story is of frequent occurrence
in ancient writers; for, independent of the narrative in the Fasti of the
Roman poet, it has been told by Dionysius Halicarnassensis, by Livy, by
Dion Cassius, and Diodorus Siculus. "I learn from Coxeter's notes," says
Warton, "that the Fasti were translated into English verse before the year
1570. If so, the many little pieces now current on the subject of Lucretia,
although her legend is in Chaucer, might immediately originate from this
source. In 1568, occurs a Ballett called, 'The grevious complaynt of
Lucrece.' And afterwards, in the year 1569, is licenced to James Robertes,

'A ballet of the death of Lucryssia.' There is also a ballad of the legend of
Lucrece, printed in 1576. These publications might give rise to Shakspeare's
Rape of Lucrece, which appeared in 1594. At this period of our poetry, we
find the same subject occupying the attention of the public for many years,
and successively presented in new and various forms by different poets.
Lucretia was the grand example of conjugal fidelity throughout the Gothic
ages."[34:A]
One material advantage which the Rape of Lucrece possesses over its
predecessor, is, that its moral is unexceptionable; and, on this account, we
have the authority of Dr. Gabriel Harvey, that it was preferred by the graver
readers. In every other respect, no very decided superiority, we are afraid,
can be adduced. It is more studied and elaborate, it is true; but the result of
this labour has in many instances been only an accumulation of far-fetched
imagery and fatiguing circumlocution. Yet, notwithstanding these defects,
palpable as they are, the poem has not merited the depreciation to which it
has been subjected by some very fastidious critics. It occasionally delights
us by a few fervid sketches of imagination and description; and by several
passages of a moral and pathetic cast, clothed in language of much energy
and beauty; and though the general tone of the versification be more heavy
and encumbered than that of the Venus and Adonis, it is sometimes
distinguished by point, legerity, and grace. The quotations, indeed, which
we are about to give from this neglected poem, are not only such as would
confer distinction on any work, but, to say more, they are worthy of the poet
which produced them.
Of metrical sweetness, of moral reflection, and of splendid and
appropriate imagery, we find an exquisite specimen at the very opening of
the poem. Collatine, boasting of his felicity "in the possession of his
beauteous mate," the bard exclaims—

"O happiness enjoy'd but of a few!

And, if possess'd, as soon decayed and done
As is the morning's silver melting dew,
Against the golden splendour of the sun!
A date expir'd, and cancel'd ere begun."[34:B]
Stanza iv.
We must not omit also the first clause of the sixteenth stanza, which
affords an admirable example of spirited and harmonious rhythm. Tarquin
in addressing Lucrece:—

"He stories to her ears her husband's fame,
Won in the fields of fruitful Italy;
And decks with praises Collatine's high name;
Made glorious by his manly chivalry,
With bruised arms and wreaths of victory."

One of the peculiar excellences of the Rape of Lucrece, is its frequent
expression of correct sentiment in pointed language and emphatic verse.
Tarquin, soliloquising on the crime which he is about to commit, thus gives
vent to the agonies of momentary contrition:—

"Fair torch, burn out thy light, and lend it not
To darken her whose light excelleth thine!
And die unhallow'd thoughts, before you blot
With your uncleanness that which is divine!

O shame to knighthood and to shining arms!
O foul dishonour to my houshold's grave!
O impious act, including all foul harms!
A martial man to be soft fancy's slave!—

What win I, if I gain the thing I seek?

A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy!
Who buys a minute's mirth, to wail a week?
Or sells eternity, to get a toy?"
The same terseness of diction and concinnity of versification appear in
the subsequent lines:—

"Then for thy husband's and thy children's sake,
Tender my suit: bequeath not to their lot
The shame that from them no device can take,
The blemish that will never be forgot."

It may, likewise, be added, that simplicity and strength in the
modulation, together with a forcible plainness of phraseology, characterise a
few stanzas, of which one shall be given as an instance:—

"O teach me how to make mine own excuse!
Or, at the least, this refuge let me find;
Though my gross blood be stain'd with this abuse,
Immaculate and spotless is my mind;
That was not forc'd; that never was inclin'd
To accessary yieldings—but, still pure,
Doth in her poison'd closet yet endure."

To these short examples, which are selected for the purpose of showing,
not only the occasional felicity of the poet in the mechanism of his verse,
but the uncommon and unapprehended worth of what this mechanism is the
vehicle, we shall subjoin three passages of greater length, illustrative of
what this early production of our author's Muse can exhibit in the three
great departments of the descriptive, the pathetic, and the morally sublime.
Lucrece, in the paroxysms of her grief, is represented as telling her
mournful story

"To pencil'd pensiveness and coloured sorrow,"

to a piece

"Of skilful painting, made for Priam's Troy,"

where

"Many a dry drop seemed a weeping tear,
Shed for the slaughtered husband by the wife;"

and where

"The red blood reek'd to show the painter's strife,
And dying eyes gleam'd forth their ashy lights:"

"She throws her eyes about the painting round,
And whom she finds forlorn, she doth lament;
At last she sees a wretched image bound,
That piteous looks to Phrygian shepherds lent;
His face, though full of cares, yet show'd content:
Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes,
So mild, that Patience seem'd to scorn his woes.

In him the painter labour'd with his skill
To hide deceit, and give the harmless show
An humble gait, calm looks, eyes wailing still,
A brow unbent, that seem'd to welcome woe;
Cheeks, neither red nor pale, but mingled so
That blushing red no guilty instance gave,
Nor ashy pale the fear that false hearts have.

But like a constant and confirmed devil,

He entertain'd a show so seeming just,
And therein so ensconc'd his secret evil,
That jealousy itself could not mistrust——

The well-skill'd workman this mild image drew
For perjur'd Sinon."
This is a picture, of which the colouring, but too often overcharged in
every other part of the poem, may be pronounced chaste and correct.
A simple and unaffected flow of thought, expressed in diction of equal
purity and plainness, are essential requisites towards the production of the
pathetic, either in poetry or prose; and, unfortunately, in the Rape of
Lucrece, these excellences, especially in their combined state, are of very
rare occurrence. We are not, however, totally destitute of passages which,
by their tenderness and simplicity, appeal to the heart. Thus the complete
wretchedness of Lucretia is powerfully and simply painted in the following
lines:—

"The little birds that tune their morning's joy,
Make her moans mad with their sweet melody.
For mirth doth search the bottom of annoy;
Sad souls are slain in merry company;
Grief best is pleas'd with grief's society:
True sorrow then is feelingly suffic'd,
When with like semblance it is sympathiz'd."

She, accordingly, invokes the melancholy nightingale, and invites her,
from similarity of fate, to be her companion in distress.—

"And for, poor bird, thou sing'st not in the day,
As shaming any eye should thee behold,
Some dark deep desert, seated from the way,

That knows nor parching heat nor freezing cold,
Will we find out; and there we will unfold
To creatures stern sad tunes, to change their kinds:
Since men prove beasts, let beasts bear gentle minds."
"Shakspeare has here," says Mr. Malone, in a note on the first of these
stanzas, "as in all his writings, shown an intimate acquaintance with the
human heart. Every one that has felt the pressure of grief will readily
acknowledge that mirth doth search the bottom of annoy."[38:A]
The last specimen which we shall select from this poem, would alone
preserve it from oblivion, were it necessary to protect from such a fate any
work which bears the mighty name of Shakspeare. Indeed, whether we
consider this extract in relation to its diction, its metre, its sentiment, or the
sublimity of its close, it is alike calculated to excite our admiration:—

"Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring;
Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers;
The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing;
What virtue breeds, iniquity devours:
We have no good that we can say is ours,
But ill-annexed opportunity
Or kills his life, or else his quality.

O, Opportunity! thy guilt is great:
'Tis thou that execut'st the traitor's treason;
Thou set'st the wolf where he the lamb may get;
Whoever plots the sin, thou point'st the season;
'Tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, at reason;
And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him,
Sits Sin, to seize the souls that wander by him."

We have already seen, that, in the passages quoted from contemporary
writers in favour of Venus and Adonis, the Rape of Lucrece has, with the
exception of two instances, been honoured with equal notice and equal
approbation. Here, therefore, it will only be necessary to add those notices
in which the latter production is the exclusive object of praise.
Of these, the earliest[38:B] is to be found in the first edition of Drayton's
"Matilda, the faire and chaste Daughter of Lord Robert Fitzwater,"
published in 1594, a few months, or probably weeks, after the appearance
of the Rape of Lucrece. In this impression, and solely in this impression, the
Heroine thus eulogises the composition of our bard:—

"Lucrece, of whom proud Rome hath boasted long,
Lately reviv'd to live another age,
And here arriv'd to tell of Tarquin's wrong,
Her chaste denial, and the tyrants rage,
Acting her passions on our stately stage,
She is remember'd, all forgetting me,
Yet I as fair find chaste as ere was she."[39:A]

The year following Drayton's Matilda, a work was printed in quarto,
under the title of Polimanteia, in the margin of which Shakspeare's Lucrece
is thus cursorily mentioned. "All praise-worthy Lucretia, Sweet
Shakspeare."[39:B]
The next separate notice of this poem occurs in some verses prefixed to
the second edition of "Willobie his Avisa," which appeared in 1596. They
are subscribed Contraria Contrariis Vigilantius Dormitanus, and open with
the allusion to Shakspeare's Lucrece:—

"In lavine land though Livie boast,
There hath beene seene a constant dame;

Though Rome lament that she have lost
The garland of her rarest fame,
Yet now ye see that here is found
As great a faith in English ground.

Though Collatine have dearly bought
To high renowne a lasting life,
And found, that most in vaine have sought
To have a faire and constant wife,
Yet Tarquine pluckt his glistring grape,
And Shake-speare paintes poor Lucrece rape."[40:A]
To these contemporary notices, with the view of showing what was
thought of the Rape of Lucrece half a century after its production, we shall
subjoin the opinion of S. Sheppard, who, in "The Times Displayed in Six
Sestyads," printed in 1646, 4to., comparing Shakspeare with Euripides,
Sophocles, and Aristophanes, adds—

"His sweet and his to be admired lay
He wrote of lustful Tarquin's rape, shews he
Did understand the depth of poesie."[40:B]

The editions of the Rape of Lucrece were as numerous as those of the
Venus and Adonis. "In thirteen years after their first appearance," remarks
Mr. Malone, "six impressions of each of them were printed, while in the
same period, his Romeo and Juliet, one of his most popular plays, passed
only twice through the press."[41:A]
Of the early re-impressions, those which are extant, are in small octavo,
of the date 1596, 1598, 1600, 1607, 1616, 1624, 1632, &c. In the title of
that which was published in 1616, occur the words newly revised and
corrected. "When this copy first came to my hands," says Mr. Malone, "it

occurred to me, that our author had perhaps an intention of revising and
publishing all his works, (which his fellow-comedians, in their preface to
his plays, seem to hint he would have done, if he had lived,) and that he
began with this early production of his muse, but was prevented by death
from completing his scheme; for he died in the same year in which this
corrected copy of Lucrece (as it is called) was printed. But on an attentive
examination of this edition, I have not the least doubt that the piece was
revised by some other hand. It is so far from being correct, that it is
certainly the most inaccurate and corrupt of all the ancient copies."[41:B]
To the Rape of Lucrece succeeds, in the order of publication, the
Passionate Pilgrim. This imperfect collection of our author's minor pieces
was printed by W. Jaggard in 1599, in small octavo, and with the poet's
name.
Not only is this little work entitled to notice from the priority of its
public appearance, before the larger collection termed "Sonnets;" but there
is, we think, sufficient proof that a part of its contents had, as compositions,
a prior origin. It opens with a sonnet inserted in Love's Labour's Lost[42:A], a
play which, according to Mr. Chalmers, was written in 1592, and not later,
even in the calculation of Mr. Malone, than 1594. The second sonnet, and
the fourth, seventh, and ninth, are founded on the story of Venus and
Adonis, and, from their similarity in diction, imagery, and sentiment, to "the
first heir" of the poet's "invention," appear to have been originally intended,
either for insertion in the greater work, or were preludes to its composition:
they "seem," remarks Mr. Malone, "to have been essays of the author when
he first conceived the idea of writing a poem on the subject of Venus and
Adonis, and before the scheme of his poem was adjusted;" and he adds, in a
subsequent page, that the eighth sonnet "seems to have been intended for a
dirge to be sung by Venus on the death of Adonis."[42:B]

Beside these intimations of very early composition in the Passionate
Pilgrim, a similar inference may be drawn from our author's allusion, in his
sixth sonnet, to Dowland as a celebrated lutenist, and from a notice in the
old copy that the ballad commencing "It was a lording's daughter," and the
five following poems, were set to music, which music, says Oldys, in one of
his manuscripts, was the composition of John and Thomas Morley. Now
Dowland had obtained celebrity in his art as early as 1590; and in 1597,
when Bachelor of Music in both the universities, published his first book of
Songs or Airs, in four parts, for the Lute; and Tho. Morley, who, there is
reason to believe, was deceased in 1600, had still earlier been in vogue, and
continued to publish his compositions until 1597, in which year appeared
his Canzonets.
When Meres, therefore, printed his Wit's Treasury in 1598, it is highly
probable that the close of the following passage, already quoted for a
different purpose, and which has been thought to refer exclusively to the
"Sonnets" afterwards published in 1609, particularly alluded also to the
sonnets of the Passionate Pilgrim, which had been privately circulated and
set to music by Dowland and Morley. "As the soul of Euphorbus," says he,
"was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in
mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakspeare. Witness his Venus and Adonis,
his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends, &c."
It is remarkable that the year following this notice by Meres, appeared
Jaggard's first edition of the Passionate Pilgrim. May we not conclude,
therefore, that this encomium on the manuscript sonnets of Shakspeare,
induced Jaggard to collect all the lyric poetry of our author which he could
obtain through his own research and that of his friends, and to publish it
surreptitiously with a title of his own manufacture? That it was not sent into
the world under the direction, or even with the knowledge of Shakspeare,
must be evident from the circumstance of Marlowe's madrigal, Come live
with me, &c. being inserted in the collection; nor is it likely, setting this

error aside, that Shakspeare, in his thirty-third year, at a time when he had
written several plays including some dramatic songs, and undoubtedly had
produced a large portion of the sonnets which were given to the world in
1609, would have published a Collection so scanty and unconnected as the
Passionate Pilgrim, which, independent of Marlowe's poem, contains but
twenty pieces.
Indeed we are warranted in attributing not only the edition of 1599
solely to the officiousness of Jaggard, but likewise two subsequent
impressions, of which the last furnishes us with some further curious proofs
of this printer's skill in book-making, and also with an interesting anecdote
relative to our bard.
The precise period when the second edition issued from the press was
unknown to Mr. Malone[43:A], and is not yet ascertained; but the third
edition, printed in 1612, in small octavo, and published by W. Jaggard, is
connected with the following literary history.
In 1609, Thomas Heywood published a folio volume entitled "Troia
Britanica: or, Great Britaine's Troy. A Poem, devided into 17 severall
Cantons, intermixed with many pleasant poeticall Tales. Concluding with
an Universal Chronicle from the Creation, untill these present Times." This
work was printed and published by William Jaggard, and includes two
translations from Ovid, namely the epistles of Paris to Helen, and Helen to
Paris, "which being so pertinent to our historie," says Heywood, "I thought
necessary to translate."
It happened, unfortunately for the honest fame of Jaggard, that when he
published the third edition of the Passionate Pilgrim in 1612, he was
tempted, with the view of increasing the size of his volume, to insert these
versions by Heywood, dropping, however, the translator's name, and, of
course, suffering them to be ascribed to Shakspeare, who appears in the
title-page as the author of the entire collection.

Shortly after this imposition on the public had gone forth, Heywood
produced his "Apology for Actors. Containing three briefe Treatises. 1.
Their Antiquity. 2. Their Ancient Dignity. 3. The true use of their quality.
London: Printed by Nicholas Okes, 1612," 4to.; and at the close of this thin
treatise, which consists but of sixty pages, the author addresses the
following remarkable epistle to his new bookseller:—

"To my approved good friend, Mr. Nicholas Okes.
"The infinite faults escaped in my booke of Britaine's Troy,
by the negligence of the printer, as the misquotations, mistaking
of sillables, misplacing halfe lines, coining of strange and never
heard of words: these being without number, when I would have
taken a particular account of the errata, the printer answered
me, hee would not publish his owne disworkemanship, but
rather let his owne fault lye upon the necke of the author: and
being fearfull that others of his quality, had beene of the same
nature, and condition, and finding you on the contrary, so
carefull and industrious, so serious and laborious, to doe the
author all the rights of the presse; I could not choose but
gratulate your honest endeavours with this short remembrance.
Here likewise, I must necessarily insert a manifest injury done
me in that worke, by taking the two Epistles of Paris to Helen,
and Helen to Paris, and printing them in a lesse volume, under
the name of another (Shakspeare), which may put the world in
opinion I might steale them from him; and hee, to doe himselfe
right, hath since published them in his owne name: but as I must
acknowlege my lines not worthy his patronage under whom he
hath publisht them, SO THE AUTHOR (Shakspeare) I know much
offended with M. Jaggard that (altogether unknowne to him)

presumed to make so bold with his name. These, and the like

dishonesties, I know you to be cleare of; and I could wish but to
bee the happy author of so worthy a worke as I could willingly
commit to your care and workmanship.
Your's ever,
Thomas Heywood."
Here nothing can be more evident than that Jaggard introduced these
translations in the "Passionate Pilgrim," without the permission, or even the
knowledge of Shakspeare, and further, that he, Shakspeare, was much
offended with Jaggard for so doing; a piece of information which
completely rescues the memory of Shakspeare from any connivance in the
fraud: and yet, strange as it may appear, on this very epistle of Heywood
has been founded a charge of imposition against Shakspeare, and the only
defence offered for the calumniated poet has been, that, contrary to the
public and positive assertion of Heywood, he, and not Heywood, was the
translator of the Epistles in question.
This interpretation can only be accounted for on the supposition that
both the accuser and defender have alike mistaken the language of
Heywood, and have conceived him to have been speaking of himself, when,
in fact, he was referring to Shakspeare; for, that the passage "so the author I
know much offended with M. Jaggard that (altogether unknowne to him)
presumed to make so bold with his name," can only be applied to our great
poet, must be clear from the consideration that Jaggard, so far from making
bold with the name of Heywood, dropped it altogether, while he daringly
committed the very offence as to Shakspeare, by clandestinely affixing his
name to the versions of Heywood.
It will be right, however, to bring forward the accusation and defence of
these gentlemen, as they will sufficiently prove that more errors than one
have been committed in their attempts, and that these have been the result
of a want of intimacy with the literary history of Shakspeare's age.

In the twenty-sixth volume of the Monthly Magazine, a correspondent
whose signature is Y. Z., after commenting on Heywood's letter, as quoted
by Dr. Farmer, and after transcribing the very passage just given above in
Italics, declares "this passage contains an heavy charge against Shakspeare:
it accuses him, not only of an attempt to impose on the public, but on his
patron, Lord Southampton, to whom he dedicated his 'unpolisht lines[46:A];'"
and, in his reply to Mr. Lofft, he again remarks,—"The translations in
question were certainly published in Shakspeare's name, and with his
permission; they were also dedicated by him to his best and kindest friend."
[46:B]

Now, that the passage in debate contains no charge against Shakspeare
is, we think, perfectly demonstrable from the import of Heywood's epistle,
which we have given at full length, and which, we suspect, Y. Z. has only
partially seen, through the medium of Dr. Farmer's quotation.
That the poet imposed upon his patron by dedicating to him his
"unpolisht lines," meaning these versions from Ovid, is an assertion totally
contrary to the fact. Of his poems Shakspeare dedicated only two to Lord
Southampton, which were published separately, the Venus and Adonis in
1593, and the Rape of Lucrece in 1594, and the expression "unpolisht lines"
alludes exclusively to the first of these productions.
So far from any permission being given by Shakspeare for the insertion
of these translations, we find him highly offended with Jaggard for
presuming to introduce them under his name; and from the admission of
these pieces and Marlowe's poem, we may securely infer that the three
editions by Jaggard of the Passionate Pilgrim were surreptitious and void of
all authority. Such, indeed, seems to have been the opinion of his
contemporaries with regard to the first impression; for the two poems in
Jaggard's collection of 1599, commencing "My flocks feed not," and "As it
fell upon a day," are inscribed to Shakspeare, while in England's Helicon of

1600 they bear the subscription of Ignoto, a pretty plain intimation of all
want of reliance on the editorial sagacity of this unprincipled bookseller.
Justice requires of us to state that Y. Z. has not brought forward this
accusation from any enmity to the poet, of whom, on the contrary, he
professes himself to be an ardent admirer; but with the hope of seeing the
transaction cleared up to the honour of his favourite bard, a hope which Mr.
Lofft, in a subsequent number of the Magazine, generously comes forward
to gratify.
In doing this, however, he has unfortunately taken for granted the data
on which Y. Z. has founded his charge, and builds his defence of the poet on
the ill-grounded supposition of his being the real translator of the Epistles
of Ovid, treating the question as if it were the subject of a trial at law. The
consequence has been a somewhat singular series of mistakes. "It appears,"
observes Mr. Lofft, "that among his undisputed poems, these translations
were published by Jaggard, in 1609."[47:A] Here are two assumptions, of
which one seems founded on a surmise in the first communication of Y. Z.,
who says, "if my memory does not deceive me, the Poems of Shakspeare
appeared in 1609."[48:A] That an edition of the Passionate Pilgrim was
printed between the years 1599 and 1612 is certain, for the copy of 1612 is
expressly termed the third edition; but that this impression took place in
1609, is a conclusion without any authority, for, as we have remarked
before, no copy of this date has yet been discovered. Granting, however,
that it did issue in this year, there is every reason, from the detail already
given, to affirm, that it could not contain the translations in question, and
was probably nothing more than a re-impression of the edition of 1599.
"In the same year" (that is 1609), proceeds Mr. L., "Heywood makes his
claim." Heywood made no claim until 1612; yet, continues Mr. L., "this he
does in a book entitled 'Britain's Glory,' published by the very same
Jaggard." Now Heywood wrote no book entitled "Britain's Glory," an

assertion which seems to be verified by Mr. Lofft himself, who commences
the next paragraph but one in the following terms:—"This Britain's Troy, in
which he advances his claim to these translations, seems to have been the
earliest of the many volumes which he published," a sentence which almost
compels us to consider the title "Britain's Glory," in the preceding
paragraph, as a typographical error; but it is remarkable that neither in
Britain's Troy is this claim advanced, nor was it by many instances the
earliest of his publications, a reference to the Biographia Dramatica
exhibiting not less than five of his productions anterior to 1609.
These inaccuracies in the charge and defence of Shakspeare, the
detection of which has proved an unpleasant task, and peculiarly so when
we reflect, that to one of the parties and to his family[48:B] the venerable
bard owes many obligations, will induce us to rely with greater confidence
on the simple truth, as developed in the letter of Heywood,—that
Shakspeare, as soon as he was made acquainted with the fraudulent attempt
of Jaggard, expressed the warmest indignation at his conduct.
On the poetical merit of the Passionate Pilgrim, it will not be necessary
to say much; for, as the best and greater part of it consists of pieces in the
sonnet form, and these are but few, the skill of the bard in this difficult
species of composition will more properly be discussed when we come to
consider the value of the large collection which he has bequeathed us under
the appellation of Sonnets. One, however, of the pieces which form the
Passionate Pilgrim, we shall extract, not only for its beauty as a sonnet,
though this be considerable, but as it makes mention of his great poetical
contemporary, Edmund Spenser, for whose genius, as might naturally be
expected, he appears to have entertained the most deep-felt admiration:—

"If music and sweet poetry agree,
As they must needs, the sister and the brother,
Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me,

Because thou lov'st the one, and I the other.
Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch
Upon the lute doth ravish human sense;
Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such,
As passing all conceit, needs no defence.
Thou lov'st to hear the sweet melodious sound,
That Phœbus' lute, the queen of music, makes;
And I in deep delight am chiefly drown'd,
Whenas himself to singing he betakes.
One god is god of both, as poets feign;
One knight loves both, and both in thee remain."
The expression, deep conceit, "seems to allude," remarks Mr. Malone,
"to the Faery Queen. If so, these sonnets were not written till after 1590,
when the first three books of that poem were published[49:A];" a conjecture
which is strongly corroborated by two lines from Barnefield's
"Remembrance of some English Poets," where the phrase is directly applied
to the Fairy Queen:

"Live Spenser! ever, in thy Fairy Queene;
Whose like (for deep conceit) was never seene."[50:A]

The remaining portion of Shakspeare's Poems includes the Sonnets and
A Lover's Complaint, which were printed together in 1609.[50:B] At what
period they were written, or in what year of the poet's life they were
commenced, has been a subject of much controversy. That some of these
sonnets were alluded to by Meres in 1598, when he speaks of our author's
"sugred Sonnets among his private friends," and that a few of these very
sonnets, as many, at least, as Jaggard could obtain, were published by him
the following year, in consequence of this notice, appears to be highly
probable; but that the entire collection, as published in 1609, had been in

private circulation anterior to Meres's pamphlet, is a position not easily to
be credited, and contrary, indeed, to the internal evidence of the poems
themselves, which bear no trifling testimony of having been written at
various and even distant periods; and there is reason to think in the space
elapsing between the years 1592 and 1609, between the twenty-eighth and
forty-fifth year of the poet's age.
That some of them were early compositions, and produced before the
author had acquired any extended reputation, may be inferred from the
subsequent passages. In the sixteenth sonnet, with reference to his own
poetry, he adopts the expression "my pupil pen;" and in the thirty-second he
petitions his mistress to "vouchsafe" him "but this loving thought,"

"Had my friend's muse grown with this growing age,
A dearer birth than this his love had brought
To march in ranks of better equipage."

A small portion of the fame and property which he afterwards enjoyed,
could have fallen to his share when he composed the thirty-seventh sonnet,
the purport of which is to declare, that though

—— "made lame by fortune's dearest spite,"

he is rich in the perfections of his mistress, and having engrafted his love to
her abundant store, he adds,

"So then I am not lame, poor, nor despis'd."

There is much reason to conclude, however, that by far the greater part
of these sonnets was written after the bard had passed the meridian of his
life, and during the ten years which preceded their publication;
consequently, that with the exception of a few of earlier date, they were the
amusement of his leisure from his thirty-fifth to his forty-fifth year. We

have been led to this result from the numerous allusions which the author
has made, in these poems, to the effects of time on his person; and though
these may be, and are without doubt, exaggerated, yet are they fully
adequate to prove that the writer could no longer be accounted young. It is
remarkable that the hundred and thirty-eighth sonnet, which was originally
printed in the Passionate Pilgrim contains a notice of this kind:

"Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best;"

an expression which well accords with the poet's then period of life; for
when Jaggard surreptitiously published the minor collection, Shakspeare
was thirty-five years old.
Among the allusions of this nature in his "Sonnets," the selection of a
few will answer our purpose. The first occurs in the twenty-second sonnet:
—

"My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date."

The two next are still more explicit:—

"But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
'Bated and chopp'd with tan'd antiquity:"

Son. 62.

"Against my love shall be, as I am now,
With time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn:"

Son. 63.

and the last that we shall give completes the picture, which, though
overcharged in its colouring, must be allowed, we think, to reflect some
lineaments of the truth:—

"That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sun-set fadeth in the west——
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie."

Son. 73.
The comparison instituted in these lines between the bare ruined choir
of a cathedral, and an avenue at the close of autumn, has given origin to a
short but very elegantly written note from the pen of Mr. Steevens. "This
image," he remarks, "was probably suggested to Shakspeare by our
desolated monasteries. The resemblance between the vaulting of a Gothic
isle, and an avenue of trees whose upper branches meet and form an arch
over-head, is too striking not to be acknowledged. When the roof of the one
is shattered, and the boughs of the other leafless, the comparison becomes
yet more solemn and picturesque."[52:A]
On the principal writers of this minor but difficult species of lyric poetry,
to which Shakspeare could have recourse in his own language, it will be
necessary to enter into some brief criticism, in order to ascertain the
progress and merit of his predecessors, and the models on which he may be
conceived to have more peculiarly founded his own practice.
The rapid introduction of Italian poetry into our country, during the reign
of Henry the Eighth, very early brought with it a taste for the cultivation of

the sonnet. Before 1540, Wyat had written all his poems, many of which are
sonnets constructed nearly on the strictest form of the Italian model; the
octant, or major system being perfectly correct, while the sextant, or minor
system, differs only from the legitimate type by closing with a couplet. The
poetical value of these attempts, however, does not, either in versification or
imagery, transcend mediocrity, and are greatly inferior to the productions, in
the same department, of his accomplished friend, the gallant but unfortunate
Surrey. The sonnets of this elegantly romantic character, which were
published in 1557, deviate still further from the Italian structure, as they
uniformly consist of three quatrains in alternate or elegiac verse, and these
terminated by a couplet; a secession from the laws of legitimacy which is
amply atoned for by virtues of a far superior order, by simplicity, purity, and
sweetness of expression, by unaffected tenderness of sentiment, and by
vivid powers of description. To this unexaggerated encomium we must add,
that the harmony of his metre is often truly astonishing, and even, in some
instances, fully equal to the rhythm of the present age. That the assertion
wants not sufficient evidence, will be acknowledged by the adduction of a
single specimen:—

SONNET.

"Set me whereas the sunne doth parche the grene,
Or where his beames do not dissolve the ise:
In temperate heate where he is felt and sene:
In presence prest of people madde or wise:
Set me in hye, or yet in low degree;
In longest night, or in the shortest daye:
In clearest skie, or where cloudes thickest be;
In lusty youth, or when my heeres are graye:
Set me in heaven, in earth, or els in hell,
In hyll or dale, or in the foming flood,

Thrall, or at large, alive whereso I dwell,
Sicke or in health, in evill fame or good:
Hers will I be, and onely with this thought
Content my self, although my chaunce be nought."
Of the sonnets of Watson, which were published about 1581, we have
given an opinion, at some length, in the preceding chapter, and shall merely
add here, that neither in their structure, nor in their diction or imagery,
could they be, or were they, models for our author; and are indeed greatly
inferior, not only to the sonnets of Shakspeare, but to those of almost every
other poet of his day.
The sonnets of Sidney, which appeared in 1591 under the title of
Astrophel and Stella, exhibit a variety of metrical arrangement; a few which
rival, and several which nearly approach, the most strict Petrarcan form.
The octant in Sidney is often perfectly correct, while the sextant presents us
with the structure which, though not very common in Italian, has been,
since his time, adopted more frequently than any other by our own poets;
that is, where the first line and the third, the second and fourth, the fifth and
sixth, rhime together; with this difference, however, that the moderns, in
their division of the sextant, have more usually followed the example of
Surrey just quoted, in forming their minor system of a quatrain and a
couplet, while Sidney more correctly distributes it into terzette.
On this arrangement is by far the greater portion of Sidney's sonnets
constructed; but the most pleasing of his metrical forms, and which has the
merit too of being built after the Italian cast, consists in the Octant, of two
tetrachords of disjunct alternate rhime, the last line of the first stanza
rhiming to the first of the second; and in the Sextant, of a structure in which
the first and second, the fourth and fifth, and the third and sixth verses
rhime. Thus has he formed the following exquisite sonnet, which will afford
no inaccurate idea of his powers in this province of the art:—

"O kisse, which doest those ruddie gemmes impart,
Or gemmes, or fruits of new-found Paradise,
Breathing all blisse and sweetning to the heart,
Teaching dumbe lips a nobler exercise.

O kisse, which soules, even soules, together tyes
By linkes of Love, and only Nature's art:
How faine would I paint thee to all men's eyes,
Or of thy gifts at least shade out some part.

But she forbids; with blushing words, she sayes,
She builds her fame on higer-seated praise:
But my heart burnes, I cannot silent be.

Then since, deare life, you faine would have me peace,
And I, mad with delight, want wit to cease,
Stop you my mouth with still still kissing me."

Son. 81.
In 1592, Daniel produced his Delia, including fifty-seven sonnets, of
which only two follow the Italian standard; the remainder consisting of
three elegiac stanzas and a closing couplet. They display many beauties,
and, being a model of easy imitation, have met with numerous copyists.
Of the Diana of Constable, a collection of sonnets in eight decades, we
have already, if we consider their mediocrity, given a sufficiently copious
notice. They were published in 1594, and were soon eclipsed by the
Amoretti of Spenser, a series of eighty-eight sonnets, printed about the year
1595. These, from the singularity of their construction, which not only
deviates from the Italian costume, but has seldom found an imitator,
require, independent of their poetic value, peculiar notice. The Spenserian
sonnet, then, consists of three tetrachords in alternate rhime; the last line of

the first tetrachord rhiming to the first of the second, and the last of the
second to the first of the third, and the whole terminated by a couplet. That
this system of rhythm often flows sweetly, and that it is often the vehicle of
chaste sentiment and beautiful imagery must, in justice, be conceded to this
amiable poet; but, at the same time, it is necessary to add, that it is
occasionally the medium of quaintness and far-fetched conceit. A specimen,
however, shall be subjoined, of which, if the first stanza be slightly tainted
with affectation, the remainder will be pronounced, as well in melody and
simplicity as in moral beauty, nearly perfect.

"The doubt which ye misdeeme, fayre Love, is vaine,
That fondly feare to lose your liberty;
When, losing one, two liberties ye gaine,
And make him bond that bondage earst did fly.
Sweet be the bands, the which true Love doth tye
Without constraynt, or dread of any ill:
The gentle birde feeles no captivity
Within her cage; but sings, and feeds her fill.
There Pride dare not approach, nor Discord spill
The league twixt them, that loyal Love hath bound:
But simple Truth, and mutual Good-will,
Seeks, with sweet Peace, to salve each others wound:
There Fayth doth fearless dwell in brazen towre,
And spotlesse Pleasure builds her sacred bowre."

Son. 65.
Between the sonnets of Spenser, and those of Drayton, a period of ten or
eleven years, many minor bards, such as Percy, Barnes, Barnefielde,
Griffin, Smith, &c. the titles of whose works will be found in the table of
our preceding chapter, were induced to cultivate, and sometimes with
tolerable success, this difficult little poem; nor are there wanting, during

this period, some elegant examples of the sonnet interspersed through the
works of writers of a higher rank, as, for instance, Googe, Gascoigne,
Raleigh, Breton, and Lodge; but we shall close this criticism with a few
remarks on the sonnets of the once popular poet whose productions of this
kind immediately preceded the collection of Shakspeare in 1609.
The sonnets of Drayton which, in number sixty-three, were published
under the title of "Ideas," in 1605, 8vo., are, for the most part, written on the
plan of Daniel. Fifty-two exhibit three four-lined stanzas, in alternate rhime,
completed by a couplet; and eleven consist of three quatrains with two
verses of immediate, interposed between two verses of disjunct, rhime, and
a terminating couplet. The versification of Drayton in these pieces is
sufficiently smooth, and the sentiment is sometimes natural and pleasing,
though too often injured by an ill-judged display of wit and point. With the
exception, also, of two sonnets addressed to the River Anker, they possess
little of what can be termed descriptive poetry.
It now remains to ascertain to which of these writers of the sonnet
Shakspeare chiefly directed his attention, in choosing a model for his own
compositions. Dr. Sewell and Mr. Chalmers contend that, in emulation of
Spenser, he took the Amoretti of that poet for his guide[57:A]; but, though we
admit that he was an avowed admirer of the Fairy Queen, and that the
publication of the Amoretti in 1595 might still further strengthen his
attachment to this species of lyric poesy, yet we cannot accede to their
position. The structure, indeed, of the Spenserian sonnet is, with the
exception of a closing couplet, totally different from Shakspeare's; nor are
their style and diction less dissimilar.
If we revert, however, to the sonnets of Daniel, which were published in
1592, we shall there find, as Mr. Malone had previously remarked, the
prototype of Shakspeare's amatory verse. Indeed no doubt can arise, when
we recollect, that all Daniel's sonnets, save two, are composed of three

quatrains in alternate rhime and a couplet, and that all Shakspeare's, one
hundred and fifty-four in number, are, if we except a single instance[57:B], of
a similar description. There is, also, in Daniel, much of that tissue of
abstract thought, and that reiteration of words, which so remarkably
distinguish the sonnets of our bard. Of this no greater proof can be adduced
than the sonnet we shall now subjoin, and which, in all its features, may be
said to be truly Shakspearean:—

"And whither, poor forsaken, wilt thou go,
To go from sorrow, and thine own distress?
When every place presents like face of woe,
And no remove can make thy sorrows less?
Yet go, forsaken; leave these woods, these plains:
Leave her and all, and all for her, that leaves
Thee and thy love forlorn, and both disdains;
And of both wrongful deems, and ill conceives.
Seek out some place; and see if any place
Can give the least release unto thy grief:
Convey thee from the thought of thy disgrace;
Steal from thyself, and be thy care's own thief.
But yet what comforts shall I hereby gain?
Bearing the wound, I needs must feel the pain."

Son. 49.
There is reason to suppose that none of Shakspeare's sonnets were
written before the appearance of Daniel's "Delia." A few in the Passionate
Pilgrim seem, as hath been observed, to have been suggested during the
composition of the Venus and Adonis, and were probably penned in the
interval elapsing between the publication of the Delia in 1592, and of the
Venus and Adonis in 1593; for, though the earliest of his sonnets, they are
still cast in the very mould which Daniel had constructed.

The difficulties, however, which attend the ascertainment of
Shakspeare's model in these compositions, are nothing when compared to
those which surround the enquiry as to the person to whom they are
addressed. An almost impenetrable darkness rests on the question, and no
effort has hitherto, in the smallest degree, tended to disperse the gloom.
When Thomas Thorpe published our author's sonnets in 1609, he
accompanied them with the following mysterious dedication:—
"To The Only Begetter
Of These Ensuing Sonnets,
Mr. W. H.
All Happiness
And That Eternity Promised
By Our Ever-Living Poet
Wisheth The
Well-Wishing Adventurer
In Setting Forth,
T. T."
On the first perusal of this address, the import would seem to be, that
Mr. W. H. had been the sole object of Shakspeare's poetry, and of the
eternity promised by the bard. But a little attention to the language of the
times in which it was written, will induce us to correct this conclusion; for
as a part of our author's sonnets is most certainly addressed to a female, it is
evident that W. H. could not be the only begetter of them in the sense which
primarily suggests itself. For the true meaning of the word we are indebted
to Mr. Chalmers, who observes, on the authority of Minsheu's Dictionary of
1616, that one sense of the verb to beget is there given to bring foorth. "W.
H.," he continues, "was the bringer forth of the Sonnets. Beget is derived by
Skinner from the A. S. begettan, obtinere. Johnson adopts this derivation,
and sense: so that begetter, in the quaint language of Thorpe, the

Bookseller, Pistol, the ancient, and such affected persons, signified the
obtainer; as to get, and getter, in the present day, means obtain, and
obtainer, or to procure, and the procurer."
We must, infer, therefore, from this explanation of the word, that Mr. W.
H. had influence enough to obtain the manuscript from the poet, and that he
lodged it in Thorpe's hands for the purpose of publication, a favour which
the bookseller returned, by wishing him all happiness and that eternity
which had been promised by the bard, in such glowing colours, to another,
namely, to one of the immediate subjects of his sonnets.
That this is the only rational meaning which can be annexed to the word
"promised," will appear, when we reflect that for Thorpe to have wished W.
H. the eternity which had been promised him by an ever-living poet, would
have been not only superfluous, but downright nonsense: the eternity of an
ever-living poet must necessarily ensue, and was a proper subject of
congratulation, but not of wishing or of hope.
It appears also that this dedication was understood in the same light by
some of the earlier editors of the sonnets. Cotes, it is true, republished them
in 1640 without a commentary; but when Gildon re-printed them in 1710,
he gives it as his opinion that they were all of them in praise of his mistress;
and Dr. Sewell, when he edited them in 1728, had embraced a similar idea,
for he tells us, in reference to our author's example, that "A young muse
must have a mistress, to play off the beginning of fancy; nothing being so
apt to elevate the soul to a pitch of poetry, as the passion of love."[59:A]
The conclusion of these editors remained undisputed for more than half
a century, when Mr. Malone, in 1780, published his Supplement to the
Edition of Shakspeare's Plays of 1778, which includes the Sonnets of the
poet, accompanied by his own notes, and those of his friends. Here, beside
the opinion which he has himself avowed, he has given the conjectures of
Dr. Farmer, and Mr. Tyrwhitt, and the decision of Mr. Steevens.

All these gentlemen concur in believing, that more than one hundred of
our author's sonnets are addressed to a male object. Dr. Farmer, influenced
by the initials in the dedication, supposes that Mr. William Harte, the poet's
nephew, was the object in question; but a reference to the Stratford Register
completely overturns this hypothesis, for it there appears, that William,
eldest son of William Harte, who married Shakspeare's Sister Joan, was
baptized August 28th, 1600, and consequently could not be even in
existence when the greater part of these compositions were written.
Mr. Tyrwhitt, founding his conjecture on a line in the twentieth sonnet,
which is thus printed in the old copy,

"A man in hew all Hews in his controlling,"

conceives that the letters W. H. were intended to imply William Hughes. If
we recollect, however, our bard's uncontrollable passion for playing upon
words; that hew frequently meant, in the usage of his time, mien and
appearance, as well as tint, and that Daniel, who was probably his
archetype in these pieces, has spelt it in the same way, and once, if not
oftener, for the sake of emphasis, with a capital[60:A], we shall not feel
inclined to place such reliance on this supposition.
When Mr. Steevens, in 1766, annexed a reprint of the sonnets to
Shakspeare's plays, from the quarto editions, he hazarded no observations
on their scope or origin; but in Malone's Supplement, he ventured, in a note
on the twentieth sonnet, to declare his conviction that it was addressed to a
male object.[60:B]
Lastly, Mr. Malone, in the Supplement just mentioned, after specifying
his concurrence in the conjecture of Mr. Tyrwhitt, adds—"To this person,
whoever he was, one hundred and twenty of the following poems are
addressed; the remaining twenty-eight are addressed to a lady."[61:A]
Thus the matter rested on the decision of these four celebrated
commentators, who were uniform in assorting their belief, that Shakspeare
had addressed the greater part of his sonnets to a man, when Mr. George
Chalmers in 1797, in his "Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare
Papers," attempted to overturn their conclusion, by endeavouring to prove
that the whole of the Sonnets had been addressed by Shakspeare to Queen
Elizabeth; a position which he labours to strengthen, by additional research,
in his "Supplemental Apology" of 1799!
That Mr. Chalmers, however, notwithstanding all his industry and
ingenuity, has failed in establishing his point, must be the acknowledgment

of every one who has perused the sonnets with attention. Indeed the
phraseology of Shakspeare so positively indicates a male object, that, if it
cannot, in this respect, be reposed on, we may venture to assert, that no
language, however explicit, is entitled to confidence. Nothing but extreme
carelessness could have induced Gildon and Sewell to conceive that the
prior part of these sonnets was directed to a female, and even Mr. Chalmers
himself is compelled to convert his Queen into a man, before he can give
any plausibility to his hypothesis. That Elizabeth, in her capacity of a
sovereign, was frequently addressed in language strictly applicable to the
male sex, is very true, and such has been the custom to almost every female
sovereign; but that she should be thus metamorphosed, for the express
purpose of wooing her by amatory sonnets, is a position which cannot be
expected to obtain credit.
The question then returns upon us, To whom are these sonnets
addressed? We agree with Farmer, Tyrwhitt, Steevens, and Malone, in
thinking the object of the greater part of the sonnets to have been of the
male sex; but, for the reasons already assigned, we cannot concede that
either Harte or Hughes was the individual.
If we may be allowed, in our turn, to conjecture, we would fix upon
Lord Southampton as the subject of Shakspeare's sonnets, from the first to
the hundredth and twenty-sixth, inclusive.
Before we enter, however, on the quotation of such passages as are
calculated to give probability to our conclusion, it will be necessary to show
that, in the age of Shakspeare, the language of love and friendship was
mutually convertible. The terms lover and love, indeed, were as often
applied to those of the same sex who had an esteem for each other, as they
are now exclusively directed to express the love of the male for the female.
Thus, for instance, Ben Johnson subscribes himself the lover of Camden,
and tells Dr. Donne, at the close of a letter to him, that he is his "ever true

lover;" and with the same import, Drayton, in a letter to Drummond of
Hawthornden, informs him, that Mr. Joseph Davis is in love with him.
Shakspeare, in his Dramas, frequently adopts the same phraseology in
expressing the relations of friendship: Portia, for example, in the Merchant
of Venice, speaking of Antonio, says,

————————————— "this Antonio,
Being the bosom lover of my lord:"

and in Coriolanus, Menenius exclaims,

—————— "I tell thee, fellow,
Thy general is my lover:"[62:A]

but it is to his Poems that we must refer for a complete and extensive proof
of this perplexing ambiguity of diction, which will gradually unfold itself as
we proceed to quote instances in support of Lord Southampton's being the
subject of his muse.
That Shakspeare was, at the same time, attached by friendship, and by
love; that, according to the fashion of his age, he employed the same epithet
for both, though, in one instance, at least, he has accurately distinguished
the sexes, positively appears from the opening stanza of a sonnet in the
Passionate Pilgrim of 1599:—

"Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still;
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman, coloured ill."[63:A]

That this better angel was Lord Southampton, and that to him was
addressed the number of sonnets mentioned above, we shall now endeavour
to substantiate.

Perhaps one of the most striking proofs of this position, is the hitherto
unnoticed fact, that the language of the Dedication to the Rape of Lucrece,
and that of part of the twenty-sixth sonnet, are almost precisely the same.
The Dedication runs thus:—"The love I dedicate to your Lordship is
without end;—The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the
worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have
done is yours, what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have devoted
yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would shew greater."
The Sonnet is as follows:

"Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
To thee I send this written embassage,
To witness duty, not to show my wit.
Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine
May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it."

Here, in the first place, it may be observed, that in his prose, as well as
in his verse, our author uses the same amatory language; for he opens the
dedication to His Lordship with the assurance that his love for him is
without end. In correspondence with this declaration, the sonnet commences
with this remarkable expression,—Lord of my love; while the residue tells
us, in exact conformity with the prose address, his high sense of His
Lordship's merit and his own unworthiness.
That no doubt may remain of the meaning and direction of this peculiar
phraseology, we shall bring forward a few lines from the 110th sonnet,
which, uniting the language of both the passages just quoted, most
incontrovertibly designates the sex, and, at the same time, we think, the
individual to whom they are addressed:—

———————————— "My best of love,
Now all is done, save what shall have no end:
Mine appetite I never more will grind
On newer proof, to try an older friend,
A God in love, to whom I am confin'd."

Before we proceed any further, however, it may be necessary to obviate
an objection to our hypothesis which must immediately suggest itself. It
will be said, that the first seventeen sonnets are written for the sole purpose
of persuading their object to marry, and how could this exhortation be
applicable to Lord Southampton, who, from the year 1594 to the year 1599
was the devoted admirer of the faire Mrs. Varnon?
To remove this apparent incongruity, we have only to recollect, that His
Lordship's attachment to his mistress met with the most decided and
relentless opposition from the Queen; and there is every reason to infer,
from the voluntary absences of the Earl in the years 1597 and 1598, and the
extreme distress of his mistress on these occasions, that the connection had
been twice given up, on his part, in deference to the will of his capricious
sovereign.
Shakspeare, when his friend at the age of twenty-one was first smitten
with the charms of Elizabeth Vernon, was high in His Lordship's confidence
and favour, as the dedication of his Lucrece, at this period, fully evinces.
We also know, that the Earl was very indignant at the interference of the
Queen; that he very reluctantly submitted, for some years, to her cruel
restrictions in this affair; and if, in conformity with his constitutional
irritability of temper, and the natural impulse of passion on such a subject,
we merely admit, his having declared what every lover would be tempted to
utter on the occasion, that if he could not marry the object of his choice, he
would die single, a complete key will be given to what has hitherto proved
inexplicable.

It immediately, indeed, and most satisfactorily accounts for four
circumstances, not to be explained on any other plan. It affords, in the first
place, an easy and natural clue to the poet's expostulatory language, who,
being ardently attached to his patron, wished, of course, to see him happy
either in the possession of his first choice or in the arms of a second, and,
therefore, reprobates, in strong terms, such a premature vow of celibacy: it
gives in the second place, an adequate solution of the question, why so few
as only seventeen sonnets, and these the earliest in the collection, are
employed to enforce the argument? for when His Lordship, on his return to
London from the continent in 1598, embraced the resolution of marrying
his mistress, notwithstanding the continued opposition of the Queen, all
ground for further expostulation was instantly withdrawn. These seventeen
sonnets, therefore, were written between the years 1594 and 1598, and were
consequently among those noticed by Meres in 1598, as in private
circulation: in the third place, it assigns a sufficient motive for withholding
from public view, until after the death of the Queen, a collection of which
part was written to counteract her known wishes, by exciting the Earl to
form an early and independent choice: and in the fourth place it furnishes a
cogent reason why Jaggard, in his surreptitious edition of the Passionate
Pilgrim in 1599, did not dare to publish any of these sonnets, at a time when
Southampton and his lady were imprisoned by the enraged Elizabeth, as a
punishment for their clandestine union.
Having thus, satisfactorily as we think, not only removed the objection
but strikingly corroborated the argument through the medium of our
defence, we shall select a few passages from these initiatory sonnets in
order still further to show the masculine nature of their object, and to give a
specimen of the poet's expostulatory freedom:—

"—— Where is she so fair, whose un-ear'd womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond, will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity."
Sonnet 3.

"—— thou — — — —
Unlook'd on diest, unless thou get a son."

Son. 7.

"The world will be thy widow and still weep—
No love toward others in that bosom sits,
That on himself such murderous shame commits."

Son. 9.

"—— —— —— —— Dear my love, you know,
You had a father; let your son say so."

Son. 13.

"Now stand you on the top of happy hours;
And many maiden garlands yet unset,
With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers."

Son. 16.
If more instances were wanting to prove that Shakspeare's object was a
male friend, a multitude might be quoted from the remaining sonnets; we
shall content ourselves, however, with adding a few to those already given
from the first seventeen:—

"O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;

Him in thy course untainted do allow,
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men."
Son. 19.

"His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green."

Son. 63.
The transcription of one entire sonnet will spare further quotation, as it
must prove, against all the efforts of sophistry, the sex for which we
contend:

"Ah! wherefore with infection should HE live
And with HIS presence grace impiety.
That sin by HIM advantage should atchieve,
And lace itself with HIS society.
Why should false painting imitate HIS cheek,
And steal dead seeing of HIS living hue?
Why should poor beauty indirectly seek
Roses of shadow, since HIS rose is true?
Why should HE live now Nature bankrupt is,
Beggar'd of blood to blush through lively veins?
For she hath no exchequer now but HIS,
And proud of many, lives upon HIS gains.
O, HIM she stores, to show what wealth she had,
In days long since, before these last so bad."

Son. 67.
The subsequent sonnets, likewise, as far as the hundred and twenty-
seventh, which appear to have been written at various periods anterior to

1609, not only bear the strongest additional testimony to the mascularity of
the person addressed, but in several instances clearly evince the nature of
the affection borne to him, which without any doubt consisted solely of
ardent friendship and intellectual adoration. Two entire sonnets, indeed, are
dedicated to the expression of these sentiments, in the first of which he tells
his noble patron, that he had absorbed in his own person all the friendship
which he (Shakspeare) had ever borne to the living or the dead, and he
finely terms this attachment "religious love." In thy bosom he exclaims—

"—— there reigns love and all love's loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought buried.
How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye,
As interest of the dead, which now appear
But things remov'd, that hidden in thee lie!
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers[67:A] gone;
Who all their parts of me to thee did give;
That due of many now is thine alone:"

Son. 31.
and in the second he says, addressing the same friend, that when Death
arrests him, his verse

"—— for memorial still with thee shall stay.
When thou reviewest this, thou dost review
The very part was consecrate to thee."

Son. 74.
That Shakspeare looked up to his friend not only with admiration and
gratitude, but with reverence and homage, and, consequently, that neither

William Harte nor William Hughes, nor any person of his own rank in
society could be the subject of his verse, must be evident from the passages
already adduced, and will be still more so when we weigh the import of the
following extracts.
We are told, in the seventy-eighth sonnet, what, indeed, we might have
supposed from the Earl's well-known munificence to literary men, that he
was the theme of every muse; and it is added, that his patronage gave
dignity to learning and majesty to grace:—

"So oft have I invoked thee for my muse,
And found such fair assistance in my verse,
As every alien pen hath got my use,
And under thee their poesy disperse.
Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing,
And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,
Have added feathers to the learned's wing,
And given grace a double majesty.
Yet be most proud of that which I compile,
Whose influence is thine, and born of thee."

In his ninety-first sonnet the poet informs us, that he values the affection
of his friend more than riches, birth, or splendour, finishing his eulogium by
asserting that he was not his peculiar boast, but the pride of all men:—

"Thy love is better than high birth to me,
Richer than wealth, prouder than garment's cost,
Of more delight than hawks or horses be,
And having thee, of all men's pride I boast."

But in terms the most emphatic and explicit does he point to his object,
in the sonnet which we are about to quote entire, distinctly marking the sex,

the dignity, the rank, and moral virtue of his friend:—

"O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends,
For thy neglect of TRUTH IN BEAUTY DY'D?
Both truth and beauty on my love depends;
So dost thou too, and therein dignify'd.
Make answer, Muse: wilt thou not haply say,
'Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix'd,
Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay:
But best is best, if never intermix'd?—'
Because HE needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
Excuse not silence so; for it lies in thee
To make HIM much out-live a GILDED TOMB,
And to be prais'd of ages yet to be.
Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how
To make HIM seem long hence as HE shows now."

Son. 101.
To whom can this sonnet, or indeed all the passages which we have
quoted apply, if not to Lord Southampton, the bosom-friend, the munificent
patron of Shakspeare, the noble, the elegant, the brave, the protector of
literature and the theme of many a song. And let it be remembered, that if
the hundreth and first sonnet be justly ascribed to Lord Southampton, or if
any one of the passages which we have adduced, be fairly applicable to
him, the whole of the hundred and twenty-six sonnets must necessarily
apply to the same individual, for the poet has more than once affirmed this
to have been his plan and object:

"Why write I still all one, ever the same—
That every word doth almost tell my name."

Son. 76.

—— "all alike my songs, and praises be
To one, of one, still such and ever so."

Son. 105.
It may be objected, that the opening and closing sonnet of the collection
which we conceive to be exclusively devoted to Lord Southampton, admit
neither of reconcilement with each other, nor with the hypothesis which we
wish to establish. This discrepancy, however, will altogether vanish, if we
compare the import of these sonnets with that of two others of the same
series.
It will be allowed that the expressions, "the world's fresh ornament," the
"only herald to the gaudy spring," and the epithets "tender churl," in the
first sonnet, may with great propriety be applied to a young nobleman of
twenty-one, just entering on a public and splendid career; but, if it be true,
that these sonnets were written at various times, between the years 1594 and
1609, how comes it, that in the hundred and twenty-sixth, the last addressed
to his patron, he still uses an equally youthful designation, and terms him
"my lovely boy," an appellation certainly not then adapted to His Lordship,
who, in 1609, was in his thirty-sixth year?
That the sonnets were written at different periods, he tells us in an
apology to his noble friend for not addressing him so frequently as he used
to do at the commencement of their intimacy, assigning as a reason, that as
he was now the theme of various other poets, such addresses must have lost
their zest:

"Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays;
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,

And stops his pipe in growth of riper days:
Not that the summer is less pleasant now
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild musick burdens every bough,
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue,
Because I would not dull you with my song."
Son. 102.
The mystery arising from the use of the juvenile epithets, he completely
clears up in his hundred and eighth sonnet, where he says, that having
exhausted every figure to express his patron's merit and his own affection,
he is compelled to say the same things over again; that he is determined to
consider him as young as when he first hallowed his fair name; that
friendship, in fact, weighs not the advance of life, but adheres to its first
conception, when youth and beauty clothed the object of its regard. In
pursuance of this determination, he calls him, in this very sonnet, "sweet
boy;" but it will be more satisfactory to copy the entire poem, in order to
show, that our interpretation is not, in the smallest degree, strained:—

"What's in the brain that ink may character,
Which hath not figur'd to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day say o'er the very same;
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.
So that eternal love in love's fresh case
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,

But makes antiquity for aye his page;
Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
Where time and outward form would show it dead."
In conformity with this resolution of considering his friend as endowed
whilst he lives with perpetual youth, he closes his sonnets to him, not only
with the repetition of the juvenile epithet "boy," but he positively assures
him that he has time in his power, that he grows by waning, and that nature,
as he goes onward, still plucks him back, in order to disgrace time. The
conceit is somewhat puerile, though clearly explanatory of the systematic
intention of the poet:

"O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost hold time's fickle glass, his fickle hour;
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st;
If nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill."

He terminates this sonnet, however, and his series of poetical addresses
to Lord Southampton, with a powerful corrective of all flattery, in
reminding him that although nature "may detain," she cannot "keep her
treasure," and that he must ultimately yield to death.
We must also observe, that the poet has marked the termination of these
sonnets to his friend, not only by the solemn nature of the concluding
sentiment, but by a striking deviation from the customary form of his
composition in these pieces; the closing poem not being constructed with
alternate rhimes, but consisting of six couplets!

After thus attempting, at considerable length, and we trust with some
success, to solve a mystery hitherto deemed inexplicable, we shall offer but
a few observations on the object of the remaining twenty-eight sonnets.
In the first place, it is not true, as Mr. Malone has asserted, that they are
all addressed to a female. Two, at least, have not the slightest reference to
any individual; the hundred and twenty-ninth sonnet being a general and
moral declamation on the misery resulting from sensual love, and the
hundred and forty-sixth, an address to his own soul of a somewhat severe
and religious cast.
Of the residue, four have no very determinate application, and to whom
the twenty-two are dedicated, is not now to be ascertained, and, if it were,
not worth the enquiry; for, a more worthless character, or described as such
in stronger terms, no poet ever drew. We much wish, indeed, these sonnets
had never been published, or that their subject could be proved to have been
perfectly ideal. We are the more willing to consider them in this light, since,
if we dismiss these confessional sonnets, not the slightest moral stain can
rest on the character of Shakspeare; as the frolic in Sir Thomas Lucy's park,
from his youth, and the circumstances attending it, must be deemed
altogether venial. It is very improbable, also, that any poet should publish
such an open confession of his own culpability.
Of the grossly meretricious conduct of his mistress, of whose personal
charms and accomplishments we know nothing more than that she had
black eyes, black hair, and could play on the virginal, Sonnets 137. 142. and
144. bear the most indubitable evidence. Well, therefore, might the poet
term her his "false plague," his "worser spirit," his "female evil," and his
"bad angel;" well might he tell her, notwithstanding the colour of her eyes
and hair,

"Thy black is fairest in my judgment's place;
In nothing art thou black, save in thy deeds."

Son. 131.

"For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night."

Son. 147.
Well might he blame his pliability of temper, his insufficiency of
judgment and resolution, well might he call himself "past cure," and
"frantick-mad," when, addressing this profligate woman, he exclaims,

"Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,
That in the very refuse of thy deeds
There is such strength and warrantise of skill,
That in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?
Who taught thee how to make me love thee more,
The more I hear and see just cause of hate?
O, though I love what others do abhor,
With others thou should'st not abhor my state;
If thy unworthiness rais'd love in me,
More worthy I to be belov'd by thee."[73:A]

Son. 150.
Now, weighing, what almost every other personal event in our author's
life establishes, the general moral beauty of his character, and reflecting, at
the same time, that he was at this period a husband, and the father of a
family, we cannot but feel the most entire conviction, that these sonnets
were never directed to a real object: but that, notwithstanding they appear
written in his own person, and two of them, indeed, (Sonnets 135. and 136.)
a perpetual pun on his Christian name, they were solely intended to express,
aloof from all individual application, the contrarieties, the inconsistencies,
and the miseries of illicit love. Credulity itself, we think, cannot suppose

otherwise, and, at the same time, believe that the poet was privy to their
publication.
To this discussion of a subject clogged with so many difficulties, we
shall now subjoin some remarks on the poetical merits and demerits of our
author's sonnets; and here, we are irresistibly induced to notice the absurd
charge against, and the inadequate defence of, sonnet-writing, brought
forward by Messrs. Steevens and Malone, in the Supplement of the latter
gentleman.[74:A]
The antipathy of Mr. Steevens to this species of lyric poetry, seems to
have amounted to the highest pitch of extravagance. In a note on the fifty-
fourth sonnet, he asks, "What has truth or nature to do with sonnets?" as if
truth and nature were confined to any particular metre or mode of
composition; and, in a subsequent page, he informs us that the sonnet is "a
species of composition which has reduced the most exalted poets to a level
with the meanest rhimers; has almost cut down Milton and Shakspeare to
the standards of Pomfret and——but the name of Pomfret is perhaps the
lowest in the scale of English versifiers."[74:B] Nothing can exceed the
futility and bad taste of this remark, and yet Mr. Malone has advanced no
other defence of the "exalted poets" of Italy than that, "he is slow to believe
that Petrarch is without merit;" and for Milton he offers this strange
apology,—"that he generally failed when he attempted rhime, whether his
verses assumed the shape of a sonnet, or any other form."[74:C]
When we recollect, that the noblest poets of Italy, from Dante to Alfieri,
have employed their talents in the construction of the sonnet, and that many
of their most popular and beautiful passages have been derived through this
medium; when we recollect, that the first bards of our own country, from
Surrey to Southey, have followed their example with an emulation which
has conferred immortality on their efforts; when we further call to mind the
exquisite specimens of rhimed poetry which Milton has given us in his

L'Allegro and Il Penseroso; and when, above all, we retrace the dignity, the
simplicity, the moral sublimity of many of his sonnets, perhaps not
surpassed by any other part of his works, we stand amazed at the
unqualified censure on the one hand, and at the impotency of the defence on
the other.
If such be the fate, then, between these commentators, of the general
question, and of the one more peculiarly relative to Milton, it cannot be
expected that Shakspeare should meet with milder treatment. In fact, Mr.
Steevens has asserted, that his sonnets are "composed in the highest strain
of affectation, pedantry, circumlocution, and nonsense[75:A];" a picture
which Mr. Malone endeavours to soften, by telling us that "it appears to him
overcharged:" that similar defects occur in his dramas, and that the sonnets,
"if they have no other merit, are entitled to our attention, as often
illustrating obscure passages in his plays."[75:B]
It is true that in the next paragraph he ventures to declare, that he cannot
perceive that their versification is less smooth than that of Shakspeare's
other compositions, and that he can perceive perspicuity and energy in some
of them; but well might Mr. Steevens reply, that "the case of these sonnets
is certainly bad, when so little can be advanced in support of them."[75:C]
Let us try, therefore, if we cannot, and that also with great ease, prove
that these sonnets have been not only miserably criticised, but unmercifully
abused; and that, in point of poetical merit, they are superior to all those
which preceded the era of Drummond.
In the first place, then, we altogether deny that either affectation or
pedantry can, in the proper sense of the terms, be applied to the sonnets of
Shakspeare. Were any modern, indeed, of the nineteenth century to adopt
their language and style, he might justly be taxed with both; but in Sidney
and Shakspeare it was habit, indissoluble habit, and not affectation; it was
the diction in which they had been practised from early youth to clothe their

sentiments and feelings; it was identified with all their associations and
intellectual operations; it was the language, in fact, the mode of expression,
in a greater or less degree, of all their contemporaries; and to have stripped
their thoughts of a dress, which to us appears quaint and artificial, would
have been to them a painful and more elaborate task. When once, indeed,
we can attribute this artificial, though often emphatic style, as we ought to
do, to the universally defective taste of the age in which it sprang, and not
to individual usage, we shall be prepared to do justice to injured genius, and
to confess, that frequently beneath this laboured phraseology are to be
found sentiments simple, natural, and touching. We may also very safely
affirm of Shakspeare's sonnets, that, if their style be compared with that of
his predecessors and contemporaries, in the same department of poetry, a
manifest superiority must often be awarded him, on the score of force,
dignity, and simplicity of expression; qualities of which we shall very soon
afford the reader some striking instances.
To a certain extent, we must admit the charge of circumlocution, not as
applied to individual sonnets, but to the subject on which the whole series is
written. The obscurities of this species of poem have almost uniformly
arisen from density and compression of style, nor are the compositions of
Shakspeare more than usually free from this source of defect; but when it is
considered that our author has written one hundred and twenty-six sonnets
for the sole purpose of expressing his attachment to his patron, it must
necessarily follow, that a subject so continually reiterated, would display no
small share of circumlocution. Great ingenuity has been exhibited by the
poet in varying his phraseology and ideas; but no effort could possibly
obviate the monotony, as the result of such a task.
We shall not condescend to a refutation of the fourth epithet, which, if at
all applicable to any portion of Shakspeare's minor poems, can alone apply
to Sonnets 135. and 136., which are a continued pun upon his Christian
name, a species of trifling which was the peculiar vice of our author's age.

That an attempt to exhaust the subject of friendship; to say all that could
be collected on the topic, would almost certainly lead, in the days of
Shakspeare, to abstractions too subtile and metaphysical, and to a cast of
diction sometimes too artificial and scholastic for modern taste, no person
well acquainted with the progress of our literature can deny; but candour
will, at the same time, admit, that the expression and versification of his
sonnets are often natural, spirited, and harmonious, and that where the
surface has been rendered hard and repulsive by the peculiarities of the
period of their production, we have only to search beneath, in order to
discover a rich ore of thought, imagery, and sentiment.
It has been stated that Shakspeare's sonnets, consisting of three elegiac
quatrains and a couplet, are constructed on the plan of Daniel's; a mode of
arrangement which, though bearing no similitude to the elaborate involution
of the Petrarchan sonnet, may be praised for the simplicity of its form, and
the easy flow of its verse; and that these technical beauties have often been
preserved by our bard, and are frequently the medium through which he
displays the treasures of a fervent fancy and a feeling heart, we shall now
attempt, by a series of extracts, to prove.
The description of the sun in his course, his rising, meridian altitude, and
setting, and his influence over the human mind, are enlivened by imagery
peculiarly vivid and rich; the seventh and eighth lines especially, contain a
picture of a great beauty:—

"Lo in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
And having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,

Attending on his golden pilgrimage;
But when from high-most pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are
From his low tract, and look another way:
So thou," &c.
Son. 7.
The inevitable effects of time over every object in physical nature,
reminding the poet of the disastrous changes incident to human life, he
exclaims in a style highly figurative and picturesque:—

"When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls, all silver'd o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;
Then of thy beauty do I question make."

Son. 12.
A still more lovely sketch, illustrative of the uneasiness which he felt in
consequence of absence from his friend, is given us in the following
passage, of which the third and fourth lines are pre-eminent for the poetry
of their diction:—

"From you have I been absent in the Spring,
When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing;

That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew."
Son. 98.
To the melody, perspicuity, and spirit of the versification of the next
specimen, and to the exquisite turn upon the words, too much praise cannot
be given. It is one amongst the numerous evidences of Lord Southampton
being the subject of the great bulk of our author's sonnets; for he assures us,
that he not only esteemed his lays, but gave argument and skill to his pen:—

"Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
Dark'ning thy power, to lend base subjects light?
Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem
In gentle numbers time so idly spent;
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,
And gives thy pen both skill and argument."

Son. 100.
From the expressions "old rhyme," and "antique pen," in the extract
which we are about to quote, it is highly probable that our bard alluded to
Chaucer, certainly before his own appearance the greatest poet that England
had produced. The chivalric picture in the first quatrain, is peculiarly
interesting, and the cadence of the metre is harmony itself:—

"When, in the chronicle of wasted time,
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,

And beauty making beautiful old rhime,
In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights;
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have express'd
Even such a beauty as you master now."
Son. 106.
It is a striking proof of the poetical inferiority of the few sonnets which
Shakspeare has addressed to his mistress, that we find it difficult to select
more than one passage from them which does honour to his memory. Of
this, however, it will be allowed, that the comparison is happy, the rhythm
pleasing, and the expression clear:—

"And truly not the morning sun of heaven
Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,
Nor that full star that ushers in the even,
Doth half that glory to the sober west,
As those two mourning eyes become thy face."

Son. 132.
In order, however, to judge satisfactorily of the merit of these poems, it
will, no doubt, be deemed necessary by the reader, that a few entire sonnets
be presented to his notice; for, though the passages just quoted, as well as
numerous others which might be given, have a decided claim upon our
approbation, yet, the sonnet being a very brief composition, it will, of
course, be required, that all its parts be perfect, and of equal value. That this
is not always the case with these productions of our author, will be inferred
from the short extracts which we have selected; but that it is so in very
many instances may truly be affirmed, and will, indeed, be proved by the
subsequent specimens.

So far from affectation and pedantry being the general characteristic of
these pieces, impartial criticism must declare, that more frequent examples
of simple, clear, and nervous diction are to be culled from them, than can be
found among the sonnets of any of his contemporaries. The following,
indeed, is given, not as a solitary proof, but as the exemplar of a numerous
class of Shakspearean sonnets; and with the remark, that neither in this
instance, nor in many others, is there, either in versification, language, or
thought, the smallest deviation into the regions of affectation or conceit:—

"No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O if, I say, you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
But let your love even with my life decay:
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone."

Son. 71.
Simplicity of style, and tenderness of sentiment, form the sole features
of this sonnet; but in the next, with an equal chastity of diction, are
combined more energy and dignity, together with the infusion of some
noble and appropriate imagery. It must also be added, that the flow and
structure of the verse are singularly pleasing:—

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd."

Son. 116.
Of a lighter though more glowing cast of poetry, both in expression and
imagination, but with a slight blemish, arising from the pharmaceutical
allusion in the last line, is the sonnet which we are about to quote. A trifling
inaccuracy with respect to the colour of the cynorhodon, or canker-rose,
afforded Mr. Steevens a pretext for the splenetic interrogation which has
been recorded by us with due censure. It is somewhat strange that the
beauties of the poem could not disarm the prejudices of the critic:

"O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye,
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly

When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth."
Son. 54.
In spirit, however, in elegance, in the skill and texture of its modulation,
and beyond all, in the dignified and highly poetical close of the third
quatrain, no one of our author's sonnets excels the twenty-ninth. The ascent
of the lark was a favourite subject of contemplation with the poet:—

"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate.
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd, such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."

It is, time, however, to terminate these transcriptions, which have been
already sufficiently numerous to enable the reader to form an estimate of

the poet's merit in the difficult task of sonnet-writing. That many more
might be brought forward, of equal value with those which we have
selected, will be allowed perhaps when we state, that in the specimens of
Mr. Ellis, the Petrarca of Mr. Henderson, and the Laura of Mr. Lofft,
eleven have been chosen, of which, we find upon reference, only one
among the four just now adduced.
The last production in the minor poems of Shakspeare, is A Lover's
Complaint, in which a forlorn damsel, seduced and deserted, relates the
history of her sorrows to

"A reverend man that graz'd his cattle nigh."

It is written in stanzas of seven lines; the first and third, and the second,
fourth, and fifth, rhiming to each other, while the sixth and seventh form a
couplet; an arrangement exactly similar to the stanza of the Rape of
Lucrece. Like many of our author's smaller pieces, it is too full of imagery
and allusion, but has several passages of great beauty and force. In the
description which this forsaken fair one gives of the person and qualities of
her lover, the following lines will be acknowledged to possess considerable
excellence:—

"His browny locks did hang in crooked curls,
And every light occasion of the wind
Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls.—

His qualities were beauteous as his form,
For maiden-tongu'd he was, and therefore free;
Yet, if men mov'd him, was he such a storm
As oft 'twixt May and April is to see,
When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be.—

His real habitude gave life and grace
To appertainings and to ornament."
These, and every other portion of the poem, however, are eclipsed by a
subsequent part of the same picture, in which, as Mr. Steevens well
remarks, the poet "has accidentally delineated his own character as a
dramatist."[83:A] So applicable, indeed, did the passage appear to us, as a
forcible though rapid sketch of the more prominent features of the author's
own genius, and of his universal influence over the human mind, that we
have selected it as a motto for the second volume of this work:—

—— "On the tip of his subduing tongue
All kind of arguments and question deep,
All replication prompt, and reason strong,
For his advantage still did wake and sleep:
To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,
He had the dialect and different skill,
Catching all passions in his craft of will;

That he did in the general bosom reign
Of young, of old; and sexes both enchanted."

The address which the injured mistress puts into the mouth of her
seducer, when "he 'gan besiege her," opens in a strain of such beautiful
simplicity, that we cannot avoid an expression of regret, that the defective
taste of the age prevented its continuance and completion in a similar style
of tenderness and ease:—

————————————— "Gentle maid,
Have of my suffering youth some feeling pity,
And be not of my holy vows afraid."

After relating, rather too circumstantially, the arts and hypocrisy which
had been exercised for her ruin, she bursts into the following exclamation:
—

"O father, what a hell of mischief lies
In the small orb of one particular tear!"

Various lines, and brief extracts, of no common merit, might be detached
from the Lover's Complaint; but enough has now been said on the
Miscellaneous Poetry of Shakspeare, to prove that it possesses a value far
beyond what has been attributed to it in modern times. The depreciation,
indeed, to which it has been lately subjected, a fate so directly opposed to
that which accompanied its first reception in the world, must be ascribed, in
a great measure, to the unaccountable prejudices of Mr. Steevens, who, in
an Advertisement prefixed to the edition of our author's Dramas, in 1793,
has made the following curious declaration:—
"We have not reprinted the Sonnets, &c. of Shakspeare, because the
strongest act of parliament that could be framed would fail to compel
readers into their service; notwithstanding these miscellaneous poems have
derived every possible advantage from the literature and judgment of their
only intelligent editor, Mr. Malone, whose implements of criticism, like the
ivory rake and golden spade in Prudentius, are on this occasion disgraced
by the objects of their culture—had Shakspeare produced no other works
than these, his name would have reached us with as little celebrity as time
has conferred on that of Thomas Watson, an older and much more elegant
sonnetteer."[85:A]
That Watson was a much more elegant sonnetteer than Shakspeare, is an
assertion which wants no other mean for its complete refutation, than a
reference to the works of the elder bard. At the period when Mr. Steevens
advanced this verdict, such a reference was not within the power of one in a

thousand of his readers, but all may now be referred to a very satisfactory
article in the British Bibliographer, where Sir Egerton Brydges has
transcribed seventeen of Watson's sonnets, and declares it to be his
conviction, that they "want the moral cast" of Shakspeare's sonnets; "his
unsophisticated materials; his pure and natural train of thought."[85:B] It may
be added, that a more extended comparison would render the inferiority of
Watson still further apparent, and that the Bard of Avon would figure from
the juxta-position like "Hyperion to a satyr."
When Mr. Steevens compliments his brother-commentator at the
expense of the poet; when he tells us, that his implements of criticism are on
this occasion disgraced by the objects of their culture, who can avoid
feeling a mingled emotion of wonder and disgust? who can, in short,
forbear a smile of derision and contempt at the folly of such a declaration?
And lastly, when he assures us, that the strongest act of parliament that
could be framed would fail to compel readers into the service of our
author's Miscellaneous Poetry, and when, at the same time, we recollect,
what gives us pleasure to acknowledge, the wit, the ingenuity, and research
of this able editor on almost every other occasion, it will not, we trust, be
deemed a work of supererogation, that we have attempted to unfold, at
length, the beauties of these calumniated poems, and to refute the sweeping
censure which they have so unworthily incurred; nor will the summary
inference with which we shall conclude this chapter, be viewed, we hope, as
either incorrect, or unauthorised by the previous disquisition, when we state
it to consist of the following terms; namely, that the Poems of Shakspeare,
although they are chargeable with the faults peculiar to the age in which
they sprung, yet exhibit so much originality, invention, and fidelity to
nature, such a rich store of moral and philosophic thought, and often, such
a purity, simplicity, and grace of style, as not only deservedly placed them
high in the favour of his contemporaries, but will permanently secure to

them no inconsiderable share of the admiration and the gratitude of
posterity.[86:A]

FOOTNOTES:
[2:A] Sydney Papers, vol. ii. p. 132.

[2:B] Venus and Adonis was entered on the Stationers' Books, by Richard
Field, April 18, 1593, six days before its author completed the twenty-ninth year
of his age.

[3:A] "There is one instance," says Rowe, who first mentioned the anecdote,
"so singular in the magnificence of this patron of Shakspeare's, that if I had not
been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William Davenant, who was
probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventured to
have inserted; that my Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand
pounds, to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a
mind to. A bounty very great, and very rare at any time."—Reed's Shakspeare,
vol. i. p. 67.

[5:A] Sydney Papers, vol. i. p. 348.

[5:B] "There were present, at this Council, the Earl of Southampton, with
whom, in former times, he (Essex) had been at some emulations, and differences,
at Court: But, after, Southampton, having married his Kinswoman, plunged
himself wholly into his fortune," &c. Declaration of the Treason of the Earl of
Essex, sign. D. quoted by Mr. Chalmers, Supplement. Apology, p. 110.

[5:C] Rowland Whyte informs us, that "Lord Southampton fought with one of
the king's great men of war, and sunk her." Sydney Papers, vol. ii. p. 72; but Sir
William Monson calls this man of war "a frigate of the Spanish fleet."

[5:D] Account of the Wars with Spain, p. 38.

[6:A] Sydney Papers, vol. ii. p. 83.

[7:A] Sydney Papers, vol. ii. p. 87.

[7:B] Ibid., p. 81.

[7:C] Ibid., p. 88.

[7:D] Ibid., p. 90.

[7:E] In a letter, dated November 2nd, 1598, Rowland Whyte says, that Lord
Southampton is about to return to England. Sydney Papers, vol. ii. p. 104.

[8:A] Imperfect Hints towards a New Edition of Shakspeare, 4to. Part II.,
Advertisement, p. xxi.

[8:B] Birch's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 422.

[8:C] Kennet's History of England, vol. ii. p. 614.

[9:A] Vide Harrington's Nugæ Antiquæ, vol. ii. p. 33.

[11:A] Bacon's Works, Mallet's edit. vol. iv. p. 412.

[11:B] Vide Queen Elizabeth's Progresses, by Nichols, vol. ii. p. 1.

[11:C] Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, p. 311, 312.

[12:A] Wilson tells us, that "the Earl of Southampton, covered long with the
Ashes of great Essex his Ruins, was sent for from the Tower, and the King lookt
upon him with a smiling countenance, though displeasing happily to the new
Baron Essingdon, Sir Robert Cecil, yet it was much more to the Lords Cobham
and Grey, and Sir Walter Rawleigh."—History of Great Britain, folio, 1653, p. 4.

[12:B] Lodge's Illustrations of British History, vol. iii. p. 270.

[13:A] Winwood's Memorials, vol. iii. p. 54.

[13:B] Lodge's Illustrations, vol. iii. p. 331.

[13:C] Winwood's Memorials, vol. iii. p. 154.

[15:A] "This Spring," relates Wilson, "gave birth to four brave Regiments of
foot (a new apparition in the English horizon) fifteen hundred in a regiment,
which were raised, and transported into Holland, under four gallant Collonells;
the Earl of Oxford, the Earl of Southampton, the Earl of Essex, and the Lord
Willoughby, since Earl of Lindsey."—History of Great Britain, p. 280.

[16:A] History of Great Britain, p. 284.

[16:B] Cabala, p. 299.

[17:A] When Richard Brathwaite dedicated his "Survey of History, or a
Nursery for Gentry," to Lord Southampton, he terms him "Learning's select
Favourite." Vide Restituta, vol. iii. p. 340.—Nash, dedicating his "Life of Jacke
Wilton," 1594, to the same nobleman, calls him "a dere lover and cherisher, as
well of the Lovers of Poets, as of Poets themselves;" and he emphatically adds,
—"Incomprehensible is the height of your spirit, both in heroical resolution and
matters of conceit. Unrepriveably perished that booke whatsoever to wast paper,
which on the diamond rocke of your judgement disasterly chanceth to be
shipwrackt." Jarvis Markham also addresses our English Mecænas in a similar
style, commencing a Sonnet prefixed to his "Most honorable Tragedie of Richard
Grenvile, Knt." in the following manner:—

"Thou glorious Laurell of the Muses' hill;
Whose eyes doth crowne the most victorious pen:
Bright Lampe of Vertue, in whose sacred skill
Lives all the blisse of eares-inchaunting men:"

and closes it with declaring, that if His Lordship would vouchsafe to approve his
Muse, immortality would be the result:—

"So shall my tragick layes be blest by thee,
And from thy lips suck their eternitie."

Restituta, vol. iii. pp. 410, 414.

[19:A] Beaumont's Poems. Chalmers's English Poets, vol. vi. p. 42.

[19:B] Several other tributes to the memory and virtues of Southampton are
on record. Daniel has one, commemorating his fortitude, when under sentence of
death, and the Rev. William Jones published, in 1625, a Sermon on his decease,
preached before the Countess; to which he added, "The Teares of the Isle of

Wight, shed on the tombe of their most noble, valorous, and loving Captaine and
Governour, the right Honourable Henrie, Earle of Southampton," containing an
Elegy on the father and son written by himself; "an Episode upon the death" of
Lord Southampton, by Fra. Beale Esqr.; fifteen short pieces of poetry, called
"certain touches upon the life and death of the Right Honourable Henrie, Earle of
Southampton," by W. Pettie, and another poem on the same subject by Ar. Price.

[19:C] Imperfect Hints towards a New Edition of Shakspeare, Part II. p. 6.
4to. 1788.

[20:A] A similar impression seems to have arisen in the mind of the ingenious
author of the "Imperfect Hints," who, after selecting the parting scene between
Bassanio and Anthonio in the Merchant of Venice, as the subject of a picture,
remarks, that "this noble spirit of friendship might have been realized, when my
lord Southampton (the dear and generous friend of Shakspeare) embarked for the
seige of Rees in the Dutchy of Cleve."—Imperfect Hints, Part I. p. 35.

[20:B] See Part II. chap. ii.

[20:C] "Mr. Malone," relates Mr. Beloe, "had long been in search of this
edition, and when he was about to give up all hope of possessing it, he obtained a
copy from a provincial catalogue. But he still did not procure it till after a long
and tedious negotiation, and a most enormous price."—Anecdotes of Literature,
vol. i. p. 363.

[27:A] These, and the following extracts, are taken from Mr. Malone's edition
of the Poems of Shakspeare.

[28:A] Malone's Supplement to Shakspeare, 1780, vol. i. p. 463.

[28:B] "Epigrammes in the oldest Cut and newest Fashion. A twice seven
Houres (in so many Weekes) Studie. No longer (like the Fashion) not unlike to
continue. The first seven, John Weever.

Sit voluisse sit valuisse.

At London: printed by V. S. for Thomas Bushell, and are to be sold at his
shop, at the great North doore of Paules. 1599. 12mo."—Vide Beloe's Anecdotes,
vol. vi. p. 156.

[28:C] Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. vi. p. 159.

[29:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 2. note by Steevens.

[29:B] Censura Literaria, vol. ix. p. 45, 46.

[29:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 197.

[30:A] Ancient British Drama, vol. i. p. 49. col. 2.

[30:B] Malone's Supplement, vol. i. p. 463.

[31:A] Censura Literaria, vol. vi. p. 276. A second edition of this satire was
published separately, in 4to. 1625.

[31:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 197, 198.—Many passages, I believe,
might be added to those given in the text, which point out the great popularity of
our author's earliest effort in poetry. Thus, in the Merrie Conceited Jests of
George Peele, an author who died in or before 1598, the Tapster of an Inn in Pye-
corner is represented as "much given to poetry: for he had ingrossed the Knight
of the Sunne, Venus and Adonis, and other pamphlets."—Reprint, p. 28.

Again in the Dumb Knight, an Historical Comedy, by Lewis Machin, printed
in 1608, one of the characters, after quoting several lines from Venus and
Adonis, concludes by saying,—

"Go thy way, thou best book in the world.

"Veloups. I pray you, sir, what book do you read?

"President. A book that never an orator's clerk in this kingdom but is
beholden unto; it is called, Maid's Philosophy, or Venus and Adonis."

Ancient British Drama, vol. ii. p. 146.

[32:A] It is the more probable that the entry of 1594 indicates a separate
edition, as an entry of the impression of 1596 appears in the Stationers' Register,

by W. Leake, dated June 23. 1596.—Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 121.

[32:B] Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. i. p. 363. This copy is in the possession of Mr.
Chalmers.

[33:A] Malone's Supplement, vol. i. p. 469. note.

[34:A] Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 415, 416.—"It is
remarkable," says the historian, in a note on this passage, "that the sign of
Berthelette, the king's printer in Fleet-street, who flourished about 1540, was the
Lucretia, or as he writes it, Lucretia Romana."

[34:B] The last line of this extract is taken from the 12mo. edit. of 1616.

[38:A] Supplement, vol. i. p. 537. note.

[38:B] Perhaps the opening stanza of the following scarce poem, entitled
"Epicedium. A funerall Song, upon the vertuous life and godly death of the right
worshipfull the Lady Helen Branch;

Virtus sola manet, cætera cuncta ruunt.

London, printed by Thomas Creed, 1594;" may allude to our author's Rape of
Lucrece:—

"You that to shew your wits, have taken toyle
In regist'ring the deeds of noble men;
And sought for matter in a forraine soyle,
As worthie subjects of your silver pen,
Whom you have rais'd from darke oblivion's den.
You that have writ of chaste Lucretia,
Whose death was witnesse of her spotlesse life:
Or pen'd the praise of sad Cornelia,
Whose blamelesse name hath made her fame so rife,
As noble Pompey's most renoumed wife:
Hither unto your home direct your eies,

Whereas, unthought on, much more matter lies."

Vide Brydges's Restituta, vol. iii. p. 297-299.

[39:A] Malone's Supplement, vol. i. p. 575.

[39:B] "Polimanteia, or The meanes lawfull and unlawfull, to judge of the fall
of a Common-wealth, against the frivolous and foolish conjectures of this age.
Whereunto is added, A letter from England to her three daughters, Cambridge,
Oxford, Innes of Court, and to all the rest of her inhabitants, &c. &c. Printed by
John Legate, Printer to the Universitie of Cambridge, 1595."

"This work," remarks Mr. Haslewood, "is divided into three parts; the first,
Polimanteia, is on the subtleties and unlawfulness of Divination, the second, an
address from England to her three Daughters; and the third, England to her
Inhabitants, concluding with the speeches of Religion and Loyalty to her
children. Some researches have been made by a friend to ascertain the author's
name, but without success. He was evidently a man of learning, and well
acquainted with the works of contemporary writers, both foreign and domestic.
The second part of his work is too interesting, from the names enumerated in the
margin, not to be given entire. The mention of Shakspeare is two years earlier
than Meres's Palladis Tamia, a circumstance that has escaped the research of all
the Commentators; although a copy of the Polimanteia was possessed by Dr.
Farmer, and the work is repeatedly mentioned by Oldys, in his manuscript notes
on Langbaine."—British Bibliographer, vol. i. p. 274.

[40:A] British Bibliographer, No. XIV. p. 247.

[40:B] Ibid. No. V. p. 533.

[41:A] Malone's Supplement, vol. i. p. 575.

[41:B] Supplement, vol. i. p. 471.—An edition of the Rape of Lucrece, with a
supplement by John Quarles, was published about 1676; for at the end of a copy
of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, in my possession, printed in 1676, and the

eighth edition, is a catalogue of books sold by Peter Parker, the proprietor of the
above impression, among which occurs the following article:—

"The Rape of Lucrece committed by Tarquin the sixth, and remarkable
judgements that befell him for it, by that incomparable Master of our English
Poetry William Shakespeare Gentleman. Whereunto is annexed the Banishment
of Tarquin or the reward of Lust, by John Quarles, 8vo."

It is remarkable, that, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, our
author's Venus and Adonis, and The Rape of Lucrece, were re-published as State
Poems, though it would puzzle the most acute critic to discover, in either of
them, the smallest allusion to the politics of their age. The work in which they
are thus enrolled, and which betrays also the most complete ignorance of the era
of their production, is entitled "State Poems.—Poems on affairs of State from
1620 to 1707." London, 1703-7. 8vo. 4 vols.

[42:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 105. Act iv. sc. 3.—We have found
reason, as will be seen hereafter, to ascribe this play to the year 1591.

[42:B] Malone's Supplement, vol. i. pp. 710. 715.

[43:A] "I know not," says this gentleman, "when the second edition was
printed."—Reed's Shakspeare, 1803, vol. ii. p. 153.

[46:A] Vol. xxvi. p. 120, 121.

[46:B] Ibid. vol. xxvi. p. 523.

[47:A] Monthly Magazine, vol. xxvi. p. 312.

[48:A] Monthly Magazine, vol. xxvi. p. 121.

[48:B] Of the ill-requited Capel, whose text of Shakspeare, notwithstanding
all which has been achieved since his decease, is, perhaps, one of the purest
extant, we shall probably have occasion to speak hereafter. Of the talents of his
nephew, and of the glowing attachment which he bears to Shakspeare, and of the
taste and judgment which he has shown in appreciating his writings and

character, we possess an interesting memorial in the Introduction to his late
publication, entitled "Aphorisms from Shakspeare."

[49:A] Malone's Supplement, vol. i. p. 714.

[50:A] Printed at the end of his "Lady Pecunia, 4to. London, 1605." This very
sonnet, however, has been attributed to Barnefield himself, and is, in all
probability, another evidence of the incorrectness or the fraud of Jaggard.

[50:B] "Shakspeare's Sonnets, never before imprinted, quarto, 1609, G. Eld,
for T. T."

[52:A] Malone's Supplement, vol. i. p. 640.

[57:A] Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, pp. 40-43.

[57:B] Sonnet 126. It should be observed, however, that Sonnet 145, though
in alternate verse, and terminated by a couplet, is in the octo-syllabic measure.

[59:A] Preface to his revised and corrected edition of Shakspeare's Works, p.
7.

[60:A] See his "Queen's Arcadia."

[60:B] Malone's Supplement, vol. i. p. 596.

[61:A] Malone's Supplement, vol. i. p. 579.

[62:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 331, and vol. xii. p. 219.

[63:A] Malone's Supplement, vol. i. p. 698.

[67:A] If we consult the context of this sonnet, and recollect that Shakspeare
addresses in his own person, it will be sufficiently evident that my lovers here
can only mean my friends.

[73:A] That this series of sonnets, as well as the preceding, should be
considered by Mr. Chalmers as addressed to Queen Elizabeth, is, indeed, of all
conjectures, the most extraordinary!

[74:A] Malone's Supplement, vol. i. p. 682.

[74:B] Ibid. p. 684.

[74:C] Ibid.

[75:A] Malone's Supplement, vol. i. p. 684.

[75:B] Ibid. p. 685.

[75:C] Ibid.

[83:A] Malone's Supplement, vol. i. p. 748. note.

[85:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 30.

[85:B] British Bibliographer, No. XII. p. 16.

[86:A] That Shakspeare himself entertained a confident hope of the
immortality of his minor poems, the following, out of many instances, will
sufficiently prove:—

"So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

Son. 18.

"Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young."

Son. 19.

"Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall out-live this powerful rhime."

Son. 54.

"Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow;
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:

And yet, to times in hope, my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand."

Son. 60.

——— "Confounding age ———
——— shall never cut from memory
My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life.
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green."

Son. 63.

"When all the breathers of this world are dead;
You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen),
Where breath most breathes,—even in the mouths of men."

Son. 81.

CHAPTER VI.

ON THE DRESS, AND MODES OF LIVING, THE
MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS, OF THE INHABITANTS
OF THE METROPOLIS, DURING THE AGE OF
SHAKSPEARE.
Before we enter on the dramatic career of Shakspeare, a subject which
we wish to preserve unbroken, and free from irrelative matter, it will be
necessary, in order to prosecute our view of the costume of the Times, to
give a picture in this place of the prevalent habits of the metropolis, which,
with the sketch already drawn of those peculiar to the country, will form a
corresponding, and, we trust, an adequate whole.
In no period of our annals, perhaps, has DRESS formed a more curious
subject of enquiry, than during the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First.
The Queen, who possessed an almost unbounded share of vanity and
coquetry, set an example of profusion which was followed through every
rank of society, and furnished by its universality, an inexhaustible theme for
the puritanic satirists of the age.
Of the mutability and eccentricity of the dresses both of men and
women, during this period, Harrison has provided us with a singular and
interesting account, and which, as constituting a very appropriate preface to
more minute particulars, we shall here transcribe.
"Such is our mutabilitie, that to daie there is none to the Spanish guise,
to morrow the French toies are most fine and delectable, yer long no such
apparell as that which is after the high Alman fashion, by and by the
Turkish maner is generallie best liked of, otherwise the Morisco gowns, the

Barbarian sleeves, the mandilion worne to Collie westen ward, and the short
French breeches make such a comelie vesture, that except it were a dog in a
doublet, you shall not sée anie so disguised, as are my countrie men of
England. And as these fashions are diverse, so likewise it is a world to see
the costlinesse and the curiositie: the excesse and the vanitie: the pompe
and the braverie: the change and the varietie: and finallie the ficklenesse
and the follie that is in all degrees: insomuch that nothing is more constant
in England than inconstancie of attire. Oh how much cost is bestowed now
adaies upon our bodies and how little upon our soules! how many sutes of
apparell hath the one and how little furniture hath the other? how long time
is asked in decking up of the first, and how little space left wherin to feed
the later? how curious, how nice also are a number of men and women, and
how hardlie can the tailer please them in making it fit for their bodies? how
manie times must it be sent backe againe to him that made it? what chafing,
what fretting, what reprochfull language doth the poore workman beare
awaie? and manie times when he dooth nothing to it at all, yet when it is
brought home againe it is verie fit and handsome; then must we put it on,
then must the long seames of our hose be set by a plumb-line, then we
puffe, then we blow, and finallie sweat till we drop, that our clothes may
stand upon us. I will saie nothing of our heads, which sometimes are polled,
sometimes curled, or suffered to grow at length like woman's lockes, manie
times cut off above or under the ears round as by a woodden dish. Neither
will I meddle with our varietie of beards, of which some are shaven from
the chin like those of Turks, not a few cut short like to the beard of marques
Otto, some made round like a rubbing brush other with a pique devant (O
fine fashion) or now and then suffered to grow long, the barbers being
growen to be so cunning in this behalfe as the tailers. And therefore if a
man have a leane and streight face, a marquesse Ottons cut will make it
broad and large; if it be platter like, a long slender beard will make it seeme
the narrower; if he be wesell becked, then much heare left on the cheekes

will make the owner looke big like a bowdled hen, and so grim as a goose,
if Cornelius of Chalmeresford saie true: manie old men doo weare no
beards at all. Some lustie courtiers also and gentlemen of courage, doo
weare either rings of gold, stones, or pearle in their eares, whereby they
imagine the workmanship of God not to be a little amended. But herein they
rather disgrace than adorne their persons, as by their nicenesse in apparell,
for which I saie most nations doo not unjustlie deride us, as also for that we
doo séeme to imitate all nations round about us, wherein we be like to the
Polypus or Chameleon; and thereunto bestow most cost upon our arses, and
much more than upon all the rest of our bodies, as women doo likewise
upon their heads and shoulders. In women also it is most to be lamented
that they doo now farre exceed the lightnesse of our men (who
neverthelesse are transformed from the cap even to the verie shoo) and such
staring attire as in time past was supposed meet for none but light
housewives onelie, is now become an habit for chast and sober matrones.
What should I saie of their doublets with pendant cod peeses on the brest
full of jags and cuts, and sleeves of sundrie colours? their galligascons to
beare out their bums and make their attire to sit plum round (as they terme
it) about them? their fardingals, and diverslie coloured nether stocks of
silke, ierdseie, and such like, whereby their bodies are rather deformed than
commended? I have met with some of these trulles in London so disguised,
that it hath passed my skill to discerne whether they were men or women."
[89:A]

After this philippic, we shall proceed to notice the Dress of the Ladies,
commencing with that of the Queen, who is thus described by Paul
Hentzner, as he saw her passing on her way to chapel, at the royal palace of
Greenwich. Having mentioned the procession of barons, earls, knights, &c.,
he adds,—"Next came the queen, in the sixty-fifth year of her age, as we
were told, very majestic; her face oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small,
yet black and pleasant; her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow, and her

teeth black; (a defect the English seem subject to, from their too great use of
sugar) she had in her ears two pearls, with very rich drops; she wore false
hair, and that red; upon her head she had a small crown;—her bosom was
uncovered, as all the English ladies have it, till they marry; and she had on a
necklace of exceeding fine jewels; her hands were small, her fingers long,
and her stature neither tall nor low; her air was stately, her manner of
speaking mild and obliging. That day she was dressed in white silk,
bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and over it a mantle of black silk,
shot with silver threads; her train was very long, the end of it borne by a
marchioness; instead of a chain, she had an oblong collar of gold and
jewels.——While we were there, W. Slawata, a Bohemian baron, had
letters to present to her; and she, after pulling off her glove, gave him her
right hand to kiss, sparkling with rings and jewels.—The ladies of the court
followed next to her, very handsome and well shaped, and for the most part
dressed in white."[90:A]
A few articles of the customary dress of Elizabeth, not adverted to by
Hentzner, and particularly the characteristic ruff and stomacher, it may be
requisite to subjoin. The former of these was profusely laced, plaited, and
apparently divergent from a centre on the back of her neck; it was very
broad, extending on each side of her face, with the extremities reposing on
her bosom, from which rose two wings of lawn, edged with jewels,
stiffened with wire, and reaching to the top of her hair, which was moulded
into the shape of a cushion, and richly covered with gems. The stomacher
was strait and broad, and though leaving the bosom bare, still formed a long
waist by extending downwards; it was loaded with jewels and embossed
gold, and preposterously stiff and formal.
The attachment of the Queen to dress was such, that she could not bear
the idea of being rivalled, much less surpassed, in any exhibition of this
kind. "It happenede," relates Sir John Harrington, "that Ladie M. Howarde
was possessede of a rich border, powderd wyth golde and pearle, and a

velvet suite belonginge thereto, which moved manie to envye; nor did it
please the Queene, who thoughte it exceeded her owne. One daye the
Queene did sende privately, and got the ladies rich vesture, which she put
on herself, and came forthe the chamber amonge the ladies; the kirtle and
border was far too shorte for her Majestie's heigth; and she askede every
one 'How they likede her new-fancied suit?' At lengthe, she askede the
owner herself, 'If it was not made too short and ill-becoming?'—which the
poor ladie did presentlie consente to. 'Why then, if it become not me, as
being too shorte, I am minded it shall never become thee, as being too fine;
so it fitteth neither well.' This sharp rebuke abashed the ladie, and she never
adorned her herewith any more."[91:A]
Neither could she endure, from whatever quarter it came, any censure,
direct or indirect, on her love of personal decoration. "One Sunday (April
last)," says the same facetious knight, "my lorde of London preachede to the
Queenes Majestie, and seemede to touche on the vanitie of deckinge the
bodie too finely.—Her Majestie tolde the ladies, that 'If the bishope helde
more discourse on suche matters, shee wolde fitte him for heaven, but he
shoulde walke thither withoute a staffe, and leave his mantle behind him:'
perchance the bishope hathe never soughte her Highnesse wardrobe, or he
woulde have chosen another texte."[91:B]
Of this costly wardrobe it is recorded in Chamberlaine's epistolary
notices, that it consisted of more than two thousand gowns, with all things
answerable[91:C]; and Mr. Steevens, commenting on a passage in Cymbeline,
where Imogen exclaims—

"Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion;
And, for I am richer than to hang by the walls,
I must be ripp'd,"—

gives us the following interesting illustration.

"Clothes were not formerly, as at present, made of slight materials, were
not kept in drawers, or given away as soon as lapse of time or change of
fashion had impaired their value. On the contrary, they were hung up on
wooden pegs in a room appropriated to the sole purpose of receiving them;
and though such cast-off things as were composed of rich substances, were
occasionally ripped for domestick uses, (viz. mantles for infants, vests for
children, and counterpanes for beds) articles of inferior quality were
suffered to hang by the walls, till age and moths had destroyed what pride
would not permit to be worn by servants or poor relations.
"When a boy, at an ancient mansion-house in Suffolk, I saw one of these
repositories, which (thanks to a succession of old maids!) had been
preserved, with superstitious reverence, for almost a century and a half.
"When Queen Elizabeth died, she was found to have left above three
thousand dresses behind her."[92:A]
With such a model before them, it may easily be credited, that our fair
country-women vied with each other in the luxury, variety, and splendour of
their dress. Shakspeare has noticed most of their eccentricities in this way,
and a few remarks on his allusions, with some invectives from less good-
tempered observers, will sufficiently illustrate the subject.
Benedict, describing the woman of his choice, says, "her hair shall be of
what colour it please God[92:B];" an oblique stroke at a very prevalent
fashion in Shakspeare's time of colouring or dying the hair, and which, from
its general adoption, not only excited the shaft of the satirist, but the
reprobation of the pulpit. Nor were the ladies content with disfiguring their
own hair, but so universally dismissed it for that of others, that it was a
common practice with them, as Stubbes asserts in his Anatomie of Abuses,
to allure children who had beautiful hair to private places, in order to
deprive them of their envied locks.

That the dead were frequently rifled for this purpose, our poet has told us
in more places than one; thus, in his sixty-eighth sonnet, he says—

—— "the golden tresses of the dead,
The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,
To live a second life on second head,
'And' beauty's dead fleece made another gay;"

and he repeats the charge in his Merchant of Venice,—

"So are those crisped snaky golden locks,
Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,
Upon supposed fairness, often known
To be the dowry of a second head,
The skull that bred them in the sepulchre."[93:A]

The hair, when thus obtained, was often dyed of a sandy colour, in
compliment to the Queen, whose locks were of that tint; and these false
ornaments or "thatches," as Timon terms them, were called periwigs; thus
Julia, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, contemplating the picture of her
rival, observes,

"Her hair is auburn, mine is perfect yellow:
If that be all the difference in his love,
I'll get me such a colour'd periwig."[93:B]

Periwigs, which were first introduced into England about 1572, were to
be had of all colours; for an old satirist, speaking of his countrywomen,
says, "It is a woonder more than ordinary to beholde theyr perewigs of
sundry collours."[93:C] A distinction, however, in wearing the hair, as well as
in other articles of dress, existed between the matrons and unmarried
women. "Gentlewomen virgins," observes Fines Moryson, "weare gownes

close to the body, and aprons of fine linen, and go bareheaded, with their
hair curiously knotted, and raised at the forehead, but many (against the
cold, as they say,) weare caps of hair that is not their own."[93:D]
To some of the various coverings for the hair our poet refers in the
Merry Wives of Windsor, when Falstaff, complimenting Mrs. Ford,
exclaims, "thou hast the right arched bent of the brow, that becomes the
ship-tire, the tire-valiant, or any tire of Venetian admittance."[94:A]
The ship-tire appears to have been an open flaunting head-dress, with
scarfs or ribands floating in the air like streamers, or as Fenton himself, in
the fifth act of this play, describes it,

"With ribbons pendant flaring 'bout her head."

The tire-valiant, if the text be correct, must mean a dress still more
shewy and ostentatious; and we know that feathers, jewels, and gold and
silver ornaments, were common decorations in these days of gorgeous
finery. Nash, in 1594, speaks of "lawn caps" with "snow-resembled silver
curlings[94:B];" and a sarcastic poet in 1595 describes

—— "flaming heads with staring haire,
'With' wyers turnde like horns of ram—
To peacockes I compare them right,
That glorieth in their feathers bright."[94:C]

Venice and Paris were the sources of fashion, and both occasionally
furnished a more chaste and elegant costume for the female head than the
objects of Falstaff's encomium. The "French hood," a favourite of the times,
consisted simply of gauze or muslin, reaching from the back of the head
down over the forehead, and leaving the hair exposed on each side.[94:D]
Cauls, or nets of gold thread, were thrown with much taste over their glossy
tresses, and attracted the notice of the satirist just quoted:—

"These glittering caules of golden plate
Wherewith their heads are richlie dect,
Makes them to seeme an angels mate
In judgment of the simple sect."[94:E]

Another happy mode of embellishment consisted of placing gracefully
on the hair artificial peascods, which were represented open, with rows of
pearls for peas.
The lady's morning-cap was usually a mob[95:A]; and the citizens' wives
wore either a splendid velvet cap[95:B], or what was called the 'Minever cap,'
with peaks three inches high, white, and three-cornered.
Paint was openly used for the face:

"These painted faces which they weare,
Can any tell from whence they came;"[95:C]

and masks and mufflers were in general use; the former, according to
Stubbes, were made of velvet, "wherewith when they ride abroad they
cover all their faces, having holes made in them against their eyes,
whereout they looke. So that if a man that knew not their guise before,
should chaunce to meet one of them, he would think he met a monster or a
Devil, for face he can shew none, but two broad holes against their eyes,
with glasses in them[95:D];" the latter covered the lower part of the face only,
as far as the nose, and had the appearance of a linen bandage. So common
were these female masks in Shakspeare's days, that the author of Quippes
for newfangled Gentlewemen, after remarking that they were the offspring
not of modesty but of pride, informs us that

—— "on each wight now are they seene,
The tallow-pale, the browning bay,
The swarthy blacke, the grassie-greene,

The pudding-red, the dapple-graie."[95:E]
The ruff, already partly described under the dress of Elizabeth, was
common to both sexes; but under the fostering care of the ladies, attained,
in stiffness, fineness, and dimensions, the most extravagant pitch of
absurdity. It reached behind to the very top of the head, and the tenuity of
the lawn or cambrick of which it was made was such, that Stowe
prophecies, they would shortly "wear ruffes of a spider's web." In order to
support so slender a fabrick, a great quantity of starch become necessary,
the skilful use of which was introduced by a Mrs. Dingen Van Plesse in
1564, who taught her art for a premium of five guineas. Starching was
subsequently improved by the introduction of various colours, one of
which, the yellow die, being the invention of a Mrs. Turner, who was
afterwards concerned in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, was dismissed
with abhorrence from the fashionable world, in consequence of this
abandoned woman being executed at Tyburn in a ruff of her favourite tint.
The extreme indignation with which Stubbes speaks of the use of starch is
highly amusing:—"One arch or piller," says he, "wherewith the devil's
kingdome of great ruffes is underpropped, is a certain kind of liquid matter
which they call startch, wherein the devill hath learned them to wash and
die their ruffes, which, being drie, will stand stiff and inflexible about their
neckes. And this starch they make of divers substances—of all collours and
hues, as white, redde, blewe, purple, and the like."
We are further informed by the same vehement satirist, that the ruff had
the additional support of an underpropper called a suppertasse, and that its
plaits were adjusted by poking-sticks made of iron, steel, or silver, that,
when used, were heated in the fire, a custom against which he expresses his
wrath by relating a most curious story of a gentlewoman of Antwerp who
had her ruff poked by the devil on the 27th of May, 1582, "the sound
whereof," says he, "is blowne through all the world, and is yet fresh in
every mans memory." It appears that this unfortunate lady, being invited to

a wedding, could not, although she employed two celebrated laundresses,
get her ruff plaited according to her taste, upon which, proceeds Stubbes,
"she fell to sweare and teare, to curse and ban, casting the ruffes under
feete, and wishing that the devill might take her when shee did wear any
neckerchers againe;" a wish which was speedily accomplished; for the
devil, assuming the form of a beautiful young man, made his appearance
under the character of a suitor, and enquiring the cause of her agitation,
"tooke in hande the setting of her ruffes, which he performed to her great
contentation and liking; insomuch, as she, looking herselfe in a glasse (as
the devill bad her) became greatly inamoured with him. This done, the
young man kissed her, in the doing whereof, he writhed her neck in sunder,
so she died miserably; her body being straight waies changed into blew and
black colours, most ugglesome to beholde, and her face (which before was
so amorous) became most deformed and fearfull to looke upon. This being
knowne in the citie, great preparation was made for her buriall, and a rich
coffin was provided, and her fearfull body was laide therein, and covered
very sumptuously. Foure men immediately assayed to lift up the corpes, but
could not move it; then sixe attempted the like, but could not once stirre it
from the place where it stood. Whereat the standers-by marvelling, causing
the coffin to be opened to see the cause thereof: where they found the body
to be taken away, and a blacke catte, very leane and deformed, sitting in the
coffin, setting of great ruffes, and frizling of haire, to the greate feare and
woonder of all the beholders."[97:A]
The waist was beyond all proportion long, the bodice or stays
terminating at the bottom in a point, and having in the fore part a pocket, for
money, needle-work, and billets, a fashion to which Proteus alludes in the
Two Gentlemen of Verona, when he tells Valentine

"Thy letters ———————————————
————————————— shall be deliver'd

Even in the milk-white bosom of thy love."[97:B]
Gowns were made of the richest materials, with velvet capes
embroidered with bugelles, and with the sleeves curiously cut[97:C]; the
fashionable petticoat was the Scottish fardingale, made of cloth, taffety,
satin, or silk, and of enormous bulk, so that when an Elizabethan lady was
dressed in one of these, with the gown, as was usually the case, stuffed
about the shoulders, and the ruffe in the first style of the day, her
appearance was truly formidable. Over all was frequently thrown a kirtle,
mantle, or surcoat, with or without a head, formed of silk or velvet, and
richly bordered with lace.
Silk-stockings, which were first worn by the Queen in 1560. Mrs.
Montagu, her silk-woman, having presented her with a pair of this material
in that year, soon became almost universal among the ladies, and formed
one of the most expensive articles of their dress.
Shoes with very high heels, in imitation of the Venetian chopine, a
species of stilt sometimes better than a foot in height, was the prevalent
mode, and carried, for the sake of increasing the stature, to a most
ridiculous excess. It never reached, indeed, this enormous dimension in
England, but seems, from a passage in Hamlet, to have been of such a
definite size, as to admit of a reference to it as a mark of admeasurement,
for the Prince remarks, "Your Ladyship is nearer to heaven, than when I
saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine."[98:A]
Fans, constructed of ostrich feathers, inserted into handles of gold,
silver, or ivory, and wrought with great skill in various elegant forms, were
so commonly worn that the author of "Quippes for upstart newfangled
Gentlewemen," 1595, exclaims,—

"Were fannes, and flappes of feathers, found
To flit away the flisking flies,—

The wit of women we might praise,

But seeing they are still in hand,
In house, in field, in church, in street;
In summer, winter, water, land,
In colde, in heate, in drie, in weet;
I judge they are for wives such tooles
As bables are, in playes, for fooles."[98:B]
Silver and ivory handles were usual among ladies of the middle class of
society; but in the higher ranks they were frequently decorated with gems,
and the Queen had several new-year's gifts of fans, the handles of which
were studded with diamonds and other jewels.[99:A] Shakspeare has many
allusions to fans of feathers[99:B]; and even hints, in his Henry the Eighth,
that the coxcombs of his day were not ashamed to adopt their use.[99:C]
Perfumed bracelets, necklaces, and gloves, were favourite articles.
"Gloves as sweet as damask roses," form part of the stock of Autolycus, and
Mopsa tells the clown, that he promised her "a pair of sweet gloves."[99:D]
The Queen in this, as in most other luxuries of dress, set the fashion; for
Howes informs us, that in the fifteenth year of her reign, Edward Vere, Earl
of Oxford, presented her with a pair of perfumed gloves trimmed with four
tufts of rose-coloured silk, in which she took such pleasure that she was
always painted with those gloves on her hands, and that their scent was so
exquisite that it was ever after called the Earl of Oxford's perfume.[99:E]
To these notices it may be added, that a small looking-glass pendent
from the girdle[99:F], a pocket-handkerchief richly wrought with gold and
silver, and a love-lock hanging wantonly over the shoulder, were
customarily exhibited by the fashionable female.
Burton, writing at the close of the Shakspearean era, has given us a brief
but exact enumeration of the feminine allurements of his day; a passage

which, whilst it adds a few new particulars, will furnish an excellent
recapitulation of what has been already advanced.
"Why," exclaims he, "do they decorate themselves with artificial
flowers, the various colours of herbs, needle works of exquisite skill, quaint
devices, and perfume their persons, wear inestimable riches in precious
stones, crown themselves with gold and silver, use coronets and tires of
several fashions; deck themselves with pendants, bracelets, ear-rings,
chains, girdles, rings, pins, spangles, embroideries, shadows, rebatoes,
versicoler ribands? Why do they make such glorious shews with their
scarfs, feathers, fans, masks, furs, laces, tiffanies, ruffs, falls, calls, cuffs,
damasks, velvets, tinsels, cloth of gold, silver tissue? Such setting up with
corks, straitening with whale bones; why, it is but as a day-net catcheth
larks, to make young ones stoop unto them.—And when they are
disappointed, they dissolve into tears, which they wipe away like sweat:
weep with one eye, laugh with the other; or as children, weep and cry they
can both together: and as much pity is to be taken of a woman weeping as
of a goose going barefoot."[100:A]
We have seen in the extract from Harrison, at the commencement of this
chapter, that a great portion of it is employed in satirising the extravagance
and folly of the male-dress of his times, and the adduction of further
particulars will serve but to strengthen the propriety of his invective, and to
prove, what will scarcely be credited, that, in the absurdity and frivolity of
personal ornament, the men far surpassed the other sex.
Though there is reason to conclude that this taste for expensive and
frivolous declaration, was originally derived from the reign of Elizabeth,
yet was it even still more encouraged by James; for though he set no
example of profusion of this kind in his own person, Sir Arthur Wheldon
declaring that he was "in his apparrell so constant, as by his good will he
would never change his cloathes till very ragges; his fashion never:

insomuch, as one bringing to him a hat of a Spanish block, he cast it from
him, swearing he neither loved them nor their fashions. Another time,
bringing him roses on his shoes, asked, if they would make him a ruffe-
footed-dove? one yard of sixpenny ribband served that turne[101:A];" yet was
he passionately attached to dress in the persons of his courtiers; "he doth
admire good fashion in cloaths;" says Lord Howard, writing to Sir John
Harington in 1611; "I would wish you to be well trimmed; get a new jerkin
well bordered, and not too short; the King saith, he liketh a flowing
garment; be sure it be not all of one sort, but diversly coloured, the collar
falling somewhat down, and your ruff well stiffend and bushy. We have
lately had many gallants who failed in their suits, for want of due
observance of these matters. The King is nicely heedfull of such points, and
dwelleth on good looks and handsome accoutrements. Eighteen servants
were lately discharged, and many more will be discarded, who are not to his
liking in these matters.—Robert Carr is now most likely to win the Prince's
affection, and dothe it wonderously in a little time. The Prince leaneth on
his arm, pinches his cheek, smoothes his ruffled garment, and, when he
looketh at Carr, directeth discourse to divers others. This young man dothe
much study all art and device; he hath changed his tailors and tiremen many
times, and all to please the Prince, who laugheth at the long grown fashion
of our young courtiers, and wisheth for change for every day."[101:B]
King James's love of finery seems to have been imbibed, not only by his
courtiers, but by all his youthful subjects; for from the crown of his head to
the sole of his foot, nothing can exceed the fantastic attire by which the
beau of this period was distinguished. His hair was worn long and flowing,
"whose length," says Decker, "before the rigorous edge of any puritanical
pair of scissors should shorten the breadth of a finger, let the three
housewifely spinsters of destiny rather curtail the thread of thy life;—let it
play openly with the lascivious wind, even on the top of your shoulders."
[102:A]
His hat was made of silk, velvet, taffeta, or beaver, the last being the

most expensive; the crown was high, and narrow toward the top, "like the
speare or shaft of a steeple," observes Stubbes, "standing a quarter of a yard
above their heads;" the edges, and sometimes the whole hat, were
embroidered with gold and silver, to which a costly hat-band sparkling with
gems, and a lofty plume of feathers, were generally added. It appears, from
a passage in the Taming of the Shrew, that to these high hats the name of
copatain was given; for Vincentio, surprised at Tranio being dressed as a
gentleman, exclaims, "O fine villain! A silken doublet! a velvet hose! a
scarlet cloak! and a copatain hat![102:B]" a word which Mr. Steevens
considers as synonymous with a high copt hat. It was usual with gallants to
wear gloves in their hats, as a memorial of their ladies favour.[102:C]
Of the beard and its numerous forms, we have already seen a curious
detail by Harrison, to which we may subjoin, that it was customary to dye it
of various colours[102:D], and to mould it into various forms, according to
the profession, age, or fancy of the wearer. Red was one of the most
fashionable tints[102:E]; a beard of "formal cut" distinguished the
justice[102:F] and the judge; a rough bushy beard marked the clown, and a
spade-beard, or a stiletto, or dagger-shaped beard, graced the soldier. "It is
observable," remarks Mr. Malone, "that our author's patron, Henry Earl of
Southampton, who spent much of his time in camps, is drawn with the latter
of these beards; and his unfortunate friend, Lord Essex, is constantly
represented with the former."[103:A]
Of the effeminate fashions of this age, perhaps the most effeminate was
the custom of wearing jewels and roses in the ears, or about the neck, and of
cherishing a long lock of hair under the left ear, called a love-lock. The first
and least offensive of these decorations, the use of jewels and rings in the
ear, was general through the upper and middle ranks, nor was it very
uncommon to see gems worn appended to a riband round the neck.[103:B]
Roses were almost always an appendage of the love-lock, but these were,

for the most part, formed of riband, yet we are told by Burton, in his
Anatomy of Melancholy, "that it was once the fashion to stick real flowers
in the ear." The love-lock, with its termination in a silken rose, had become
so notorious, that Prynne at length wrote an express treatise against it,
which he entitled, The Unloveliness of Love-locks, and long womanish
Hair, 1628.[103:C]
The ruff never reached the extravagant dimensions of that in the other
sex, yet it gradually acquired such magnitude as to offend the eye of
Elizabeth, who, in one of her sumptuary laws, ordered it, when reaching
beyond "a nayle of a yeard in depth," to be clipped.[103:D]
The doublet and hose, to the eighth year of Elizabeth's reign, had been of
an enormous size, especially the breeches, which being puckered, stuffed,
bolstered and distended with wool and hair, attained a magnitude so
preposterous, that, as Strutt relates on the authority of a MS. in the Harleian
collection, "there actually was a scaffold erected round the inside of the
parliament-house for the accommodation of such members as wore those
huge breeches; and that the said scaffold was taken down when, in the
eighth of Elizabeth, those absurdities went out of fashion."[104:A]
The doublet was then greatly reduced in size, yet so hard-quilted, that
Stubbes says, the wearer could not bow himself to the ground, so stiff and
sturdy it stood about him. It was made of cloth, silk or satin, fitting the body
like a waistcoat, surmounted by a large cape, and accompanied either with
long close sleeves, or with very wide ones, called Danish sleeves. The
breeches, hose, or gallygaskins, now shrunk in their bulk, were either made
close to the form, or rendered moderately round by stuffing; the former,
which ended far above the knee, were often made of crimson satin, cut and
embroidered[104:B], and the latter had frequently a most indelicate
appendage, to which our poet has too often indulged the licence of allusion.
[104:C]
A cloak surmounting the whole, of the richest materials, and

generally embroidered with gold or silver, was worn buttoned over the
shoulder. Fox-skins, lamb-skins, and sables were in use as facings, but the
latter were restricted to the nobility, none under the rank of an earl being
allowed to wear sables, which were so expensive, that an old writer of
1577, speaking of the luxury of the times, says, "that a thousand ducates
were sometimes given for a face of sables[105:A];" consequently, as Mr.
Malone has remarked, "a suit trimmed with sables was, in Shakspeare's
time, the richest dress worn by men in England."[105:B]
The stockings, or hose as they were called in common with the breeches,
consisted either of woven silk, or were cut out by the taylor "from silke,
velvet, damaske, or other precious stuffe."[105:C] They were gartered,
externally, and below the knee, with materials of such expensive quality,
that Howes tells us, in his Continuation of Stowe's Chronicle, "men of mean
rank weare garters and shoe-roses of more than five pounds price." Decker
advises his gallant to "strive to fashion his legs to his silk stockings, and his
proud gate to his broad garters[105:D]," which being so conspicuous a part
of the dress, were either manufactured of gold and silver, or were made of
satin and velvet with a deep gold fringe. The common people were content
with worsted galloon, or what were called caddis-garters.[105:E] The
gaudiness of attire, indeed, with regard to these articles of clothing, appears
to have been carried to a most ridiculous excess; red silk-stockings, parti-
coloured garters, and cross gartering, so as to represent the varied colours of
the Scotch plaid, were frequently exhibited.
Nor were the shoes and boots of this period less extravagantly
ostentatious. Corked shoes, or pantofles, are described by Stubbes as
bearing up their wearers two inches or more from the ground, as being of
various colours, and razed, carved, cut, and stitched. They were not
unfrequently fabricated of velvet, embroidered with the precious metals,
and when fastened with strings, these were covered with enormous roses of
riband, curiously ornamented and of great value. Thus Hamlet speaks of

"Provencial roses on my razed shoes;" and it is remarkable, that, as in the
present age, both shoes and slippers were worn shaped after the right and
left foot. Shakspeare describes his smith

"Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste
Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet:"[106:A]

and Scott, in his Discoverie of Witchcraft, observes, that he who receiveth a
mischance, "will consider, whether he put not on his shirt wrong side
outwards, or his left shoe on his right foot."[106:B]
The boots were, if possible, still more eccentric and costly than the
shoes, resembling, in some degree, though on a larger scale, the theatric
buskin of the modern stage. They were usually manufactured of russet cloth
or leather, hanging loose and ruffled about the leg, with immense tops
turned down and fringed, and the heel decorated with gold or silver spurs.
Decker speaks of "a gilt spur and a ruffled boot;" and in another place adds,
—"let it be thy prudence to have the tops of them wide as the mouth of a
wallet, and those with fringed boot-hose over them to hang down to thy
ancles."[106:C] Yet even this extravagance did not content those who aspired
to the highest rank of fashion; for Doctor Nott, the editor of Decker's Horn-
book, in a note on the last passage which we have quoted, informs us, on
the authority of Stubbes's Anatomie of Abuses, that these boots were often
"made of cloth fine enough for any hand, or ruff; and so large, that the
quantity used would nearly make a shirt: they were embroidered in gold and
silver; having on them the figures of birds, animals, and antiques in various
coloured silks: the needle-work alone of them would cost from four to[107:A]
ten pounds." Shakspeare alludes to the large boots with ruffles, or loose
tops, which were frequently called lugged boots, in All's Well That Ends
Well, act iii. sc. 2.; and we find, from the same authority, that boots closely
fitting the leg were sometimes worn; for Falstaff, in Henry the Fourth, Part

II., accounting for the Prince's attachment to Poins, mentions, among his
other qualifications, that he "wears his boot very smooth, like unto the sign
of the leg."[107:B]
Nor was the interior clothing of the beau less sumptuous and expensive
than his exterior apparel; his shirts, relates that minute observer, Stubbes,
were made of "camericke, Hollande, lawne, or els of the finest cloth that
may be got." And were so wrought with "needle-worke of silke, and so
curiously stitched with other knackes beside, that their price would
sometimes amount to ten pounds."[107:C]
No gentleman was considered as dressed without his dagger and rapier;
the former, richly gilt and ornamented, was worn at the back: thus Capulet
in Romeo and Juliet, exclaims,

"This dagger hath mista'en,—for, lo! his house
Is empty on the back of Montague—
And is mis-sheathed in my daughter's bosom:"[107:D]

and an old play, of the date 1570, expressly tells us,

"Thou must weare thy sword by thy side,
And thy dagger handsumly at thy backe:"[107:E]

The rapier, or small sword, which had been known in this country from
the reign of Henry the Eighth, or even earlier, entirely superseded, about the
20th of Elizabeth, the use of the heavy or two-handed sword and buckler;
an event which Justice Shallow, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, is
represented as regretting.[108:A] Though occasionally used as an offensive
weapon, and certainly a more dangerous instrument than its predecessor, it
was chiefly worn as a splendid ornament, the hilt and scabbard being
profusely, and often elegantly decorated. It was also the custom to wear

these swords when dancing, as appears from a passage in All's Well That
Ends Well, where Bertram says,

"I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock—
Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn,
But one to dance with;"[108:B]

an allusion which has received most satisfactory illustration from Mr.
Douce, in an extract taken from Stafforde's Briefe conceipt of English
pollicy, 1581, 4to., in which not only this practice is mentioned, but the
preceding fashion of the heavy sword and buckler is particularly noticed:
—"I thinke wee were as much dread or more of our enemies, when our
gentlemen went simply, and our serving men plainely, without cuts or gards,
bearing their heavy swords and buckelers on their thighes, insted of cuts
and gardes and light daunsing swordes; and when they rode, carrying good
speares in theyr hands in stede of white rods, which they cary now more
like ladies or gentlewemen than men; all which delicacyes maketh our men
cleane effeminate and without strength."[109:A]
It soon became the fashion to wear these rapiers of such an enormous
length, that government was obliged to interfere, and a sumptuary law was
passed to limit these weapons to three feet, which was published by
proclamation, together with one for the curtailment of ruffs. "He," says
Stowe, "was held the greatest gallant, that had the deepest ruffe and longest
rapier: the offence to the eye of the one, and the hurt unto the life of the
subject that came by the other, caused her Majesty to make proclamation
against them both, and to place selected grave citizens at every gate to cut
the ruffes, and breake the rapiers' points of all passengers that exceeded a
yeard in length of their rapiers."[109:B] This regulation occasioned a
whimsical circumstance, related by Lord Talbot, in a letter to the Earl of
Shrewsbury, dated June 23d, 1580:—"The French Imbasidore, Mounswer

Mouiser, (Malvoisier) ridinge to take the ayer, in his returne cam thowrowe
Smithfild; and ther, at the bars, was steayed by thos offisers that sitteth to
cut sourds, by reason his raper was longer than the statute: He was in a
great feaurie, and dreawe his raper; in the meane season my Lord Henry
Seamore cam, and so steayed the mattr: Hir Matie is greatlie ofended wth the
ofisers, in that they wanted jugement."[109:C]
This account of the male fashionable dress, during the days of
Shakspeare, has sufficiently borne out the assertion which we made at its
commencement,—that in extravagance and frivolity it surpassed the caprice
and expenditure of the other sex; a charge which is repeated by Burton at
the close of this era; for, exclaiming against the luxury of fine clothes, he
remarks, "women are bad, and men worse.—So ridiculous we are in our
attires, and for cost so excessive, that as Hierom said of old,—'tis an
ordinary thing to put a thousand oaks, and an hundred oxen into a suit of
apparel, to wear a whole mannor on his back. What with shoo-ties, hangers,
points, caps and feathers, scarfs, bands, cuffs, &c., in a short space their
whole patrimonies are consumed. Heliogabalus is taxed by Lampridius, and
admired in his age for wearing jewels in his shoos, a common thing in our
times, not for Emperors and Princes, but almost for serving-men and
taylors: all the flowres, stars, constellations, gold and pretious stones do
condescend to set out their shoos."[110:A]
The dress of the citizen, indeed, was, if less elegant, equally showy, and
sometimes fully as expensive as that of the man of fashion. The medium
habit may, with great probability, be considered as sketched in the following
humorous tale, derived from a popular pamphlet printed in 1609:—

"A citizen, for recreation-sake,
To see the country would a journey take
Some dozen mile, or very little more;
Taking his leave with friends two months before,

With drinking healths, and shaking by the hand,
As he had travail'd to some new-found-land.
Well: taking horse with very much ado,
London he leaveth for a day or two:
And as he rideth, meets upon the way
Such as (what haste soever) bid men stay.
"Sirrah! (says one) stand, and your purse deliver,
I am a taker, thou must be a giver."
Unto a wood hard by they hale him in,
And rifle him unto his very skin.
"Maisters, (quoth he) pray heare me ere you go:
For you have rob'd more now than you do know.
My horse, in troth, I borrow'd of my brother:
The bridle and the saddle, of another:
The jerkin and the bases be a taylor's:
The scarfe, I do assure you, is a saylour's:
The falling band is likewise none of mine,
Nor cuffes; as true as this good light doth shine.
The sattin-doublet and rays'd velvet hose
Are our church-wardens—all the parish knows.
The boots are John the grocer's, at the Swan:
The spurrs were lent me by a serving-man.
One of my rings, (that with the great red stone)
In sooth I borrow'd of my gossip Jone:
Her husband knows not of it. Gentlemen!
Thus stands my case:—I pray shew favour then."
"Why, (quoth the theeves) thou need'st not greatly care,
Since in thy loss so many beare a share.
The world goes hard: many good fellowes lacke:
Looke not, at this time, for a penny backe.

Go, tell, at London, thou didst meete with foure
That, rifling thee, have rob'd at least a score.""[111:A]
Under the next section of this chapter, including the Modes of Living, it
is our intention to give a short detail of the household furniture, eating,
drinking, and domestic economy of our town-ancestors, during the close of
the sixteenth, and beginning of the seventeenth century.
In that part of the first volume which is appropriated to the Modes of
Living in the Country, we have seen Holinshed alluding to the increasing
luxury of his age in furniture, the convenience, richness, and magnificence
of which, as displayed in the upper and middle classes of society in the
metropolis, we shall now endeavour briefly to illustrate.
That the palaces of Elizabeth were decorated with all the splendour that
tapestry, embroidery, and cloths of gold and silver, and services of plate
could effect, we have numberless proofs; but that they united with these the
still higher luxuries of comfort and accommodation, too often wanting amid
the most gorgeous scenes, we have the testimony of Sir John Harrington,
who, in his "Treatise on Playe," circa 1597, thus describes the conveniences
which the Queen had provided for her courtiers:—"It is a great honor of the
Queen's court, that no princes servants fare so well and so orderly:—to be
short, the stately pallaces, goodly and many chambers, fayr gallerys, large
gardens, sweet walkes, that princes with magnificent cost do make, (the
xxth parte of which they use not themselves) all shew that they desire, the
ease, content and pleasure of theyr followers, as well as themselves. Which
matter, though it be more proper to another discourse, yet I colde not but
towch it in this, agaynst theyr error rather than awsterytie, that say play
becomes not the presence, and that it would not as well become the state of
the chamber to have easye quilted and lyned forms and stools for the lords
and ladyes to sit on, as great plank forms that two yeomen can scant remove

out of their places, and waynscot stooles so hard, that since great breeches
were layd asyde, men can skant indewr to sitt on."[112:A]
Hentzner, in his Travels, gives a still further display of the costly
costume of the Queen's apartments. At Windsor Castle he tells us that Her
Majesty had "two bathing-rooms cieled and wainscoted with glass;" and at
Hampton Court he adds, "her closet in the chapel was most splendid, quite
transparent, having its window of chrystal. We were led into two chambers,
called the presence, or chambers of audience, which shone with tapestry of
gold and silver, and silk of different colours.—Here is besides a small
chapel richly hung with tapestry, where the Queen performs her devotions.
In her bed-chamber the bed was covered with very costly cover lids of silk:
—in one chamber were several excessively rich tapestries, which are hung
up when the queen gives audience to foreign ambassadors; there were
numbers of chusions ornamented with gold and silver; many counterpanes
and coverlids of beds lined with ermine: in short, all the walls of the palace
shine with gold and silver. Here is besides a certain cabinet called Paradise,
where besides that every thing glitters so with silver, gold, and jewels, as to
dazzle ones eyes, there is a musical instrument made all of glass, except the
strings."[113:A]
The emulation of the nobility left them little behind their Queen in
ornamental profusion of this kind; and the picture which Shakspeare has
drawn of Imogen's chamber in Cymbeline, may be quoted as an apposite
instance, for he ever imparts the costume of his native island to that of
every other country:—

"Her bed-chamber was hanged
With tapestry of silk and silver; the story
Proud Cleopatra, when she met her Roman—
——————————— A piece of work
So bravely done, so rich, that it did strive

In workmanship, and value.
——————————— The chimney-piece,
Chaste Dian bathing.—
——————————— The roof o' the chamber
With golden cherubins is fretted: Her andirons
(I had forgot them) were two winking Cupids
Of silver, each on one foot standing."[113:B]
To this sketch we can add a few features from a little work entitled "The
Mirrour of Madnes," anno 1576, where the house of the opulent man is thus
described:—"My chaumbers, parloures, and other such romes, hanged wyth
clothe of tyssue, arrace, and golde; my cupbordes heades set oute and
adorned after the richest, costlieste, and most gloryous maner, wyth one
cuppe cocke height upon an other, beside the greate basen and ewer both of
silver and golde; filled at convenient tymes with sweete and pleasaunt
waters, wherewith my delicate hands may be washed, my heade recreated,
and my nose refreshed, &c."[113:C]
When Lævinius Lemnius, a celebrated physician and divine of Zealand,
visited London, during the reign of Elizabeth, he was delighted with the
houses and furniture of the middle classes:—"The neate cleanliness," says
he, "the exquisite finenesse, the pleasaunte and delightfull furniture in every
point for household, wonderfully rejoyced mee; their chambers and
parlours, strawed over with sweet herbes, refreshed mee; their nosegayes
finelye entermingled wyth sondry sortes of fragaunte floures, in their bed
chambers and privie roomes, with comfortable smell cheered mee up, and
entierlye delighted all my sences."[114:A]
To these general descriptions, we shall subjoin some further remarks on
a few of the articles which they contain; minutiæ which will render us more
familiarly acquainted with the domestic arrangements of our forefathers.

Arras or tapestry, representing landscapes and figures, formed the almost
universal hangings for rooms below, and chambers above. When first
introduced, it was attached to the bare walls; but it was soon found
necessary, in consequence of the damp arising from the brick work, to
suspend it on wooden frames, placed at such a distance from the sides of the
room, as would easily admit of any person being introduced behind it, a
facility which soon converted these vacancies into common hiding-places.
Thus Shakspeare, during his scenic developements, has very frequent
recourse to this expedient. "I will ensconce me behind the arras[114:B];" "I
whipt me behind the arras[114:C];" "Look thou stand within the arras[114:D]:"
"Go hide thee behind the arras[114:E]:" "Behind the arras I'll convey
myself[114:F]," &c. &c.
We have seen that in the Country, mottoes were often placed in halls and
servants' chambers, for the instruction of the domestics; a custom which
was also adopted on tapestry for the improvement of their superiors, and to
which Shakspeare refers in his Rape of Lucrece,

"Who fears a sentence, or an old man's saw,
Shall by a painted cloth be kept in awe;"[115:A]

and is further confirmed by Dr. Bulleyne, who, in one of his productions,
says,—"This is a comelie parlour,—and faire clothes, with pleasaunte
borders aboute the same, with many wise sayings painted upon them."[115:B]
What these wise sayings were, we are taught by the following extract
from a publication of 1601:—

"Read what is written on the painted cloth:
Do no man wrong; be good unto the poor;
Beware the mouse, the maggot and the moth,
And ever have an eye unto the door;

Trust not a fool, a villain, nor a whore;
Go neat, not gay, and spend but as you spare;
And turn the colt to pasture with the mare; &c."[115:C]
proverbial wisdom, which Orlando, in As You Like It, designates by the
phrase "right painted cloth."[115:D]
That "the arras figures[115:E]," though in general coarsely executed, had
strongly impressed the mind of Shakspeare, and furnished him with no
small portion of imagery and allusion, has been very satisfactorily
established by Mr. Whiter, who remarks, that their "effects may be
perpetually traced by the observing critic," even "when the poet himself is
totally unconscious of this predominating influence."[115:F]
The manner of illuminating the halls and banquetting rooms of the Great
at this period, was truly classical. We find that Homer, describing the palace
of Alcinous, says—

"Youths forged of gold, at every table there,
Stood holding flaming torches;"[116:A]

and Lucretius, speaking of the Dome of the opulent, describes its walls with

"A thousand lamps irradiate, propt sublime
By frolic forms of youths in massy gold,
Flinging their splendours o'er the midnight feast."[116:B]

Similar to these were the

—————————— "fixed candlesticks,
With torch-staves in their hands,"[116:C]

of our ancestors, which generally represented a man in armour with his
hands extended, in which were placed the sockets for the lights; and we

may easily conceive how splendid these might be rendered by the arts of the
goldsmith and jeweller.
Where these antique candelabras were not adopted, living candle-
holders supplied their place, and were, indeed, always present, when a
central or perambulatory light was required: "Give me a torch," says
Romeo,

"I'll be a candle-holder and look on."[116:D]

The gentlemen-pensioners of Queen Elizabeth usually held her torches; and
Shakspeare represents Henry the Eighth going to Wolsey's palace, preceded
by sixteen torch-bearers.[116:E] At great entertainments, beside candelabras
fixed against the sides of the room, torch-bearers stood by the tables,
supplying the light which we now receive from chandeliers.[117:A]
Watch-lights, which were divided into equal portions by marks, each of
which burnt a limited time, were common in the bed-chambers of the
wealthy; they are alluded to in Tomkis's Albumazar, 1614, where Sulpitia
says, "Why should I sit up all night like a watching-candle?"[117:B]
Every bed-chamber was furnished with two beds, a standing-bed, and a
truckle-bed; in the former slept the master, and in the latter his page. The
Host, in Merry Wives of Windsor, directing Simple where to find Sir John
Falstaff, says,—"There's his chamber, his house, his castle, his standing-
bed, and truckle-bed[117:C];" and Decker, and Middleton, further illustrate
the custom, when the first, alluding to a page, says, he is "so dear to his
lordship, as for the excellency of his fooling to be admitted both to ride in
coach with him, and to lie at his very feet on a truckle-bed[117:D];" and the
second, addressing a similar personage, exclaims,—"Well, go thy ways, for
as sweet a breasted page as ever lay at his master's feet in a truckle-bed."
[117:E]
It may be added that the standing-bed had frequently on it a
counterpoint, or counterpane, so rich and costly as, according to Stowe, to

be worth sometimes a thousand marks. This piece of luxury forms one of
Gremio's articles, when enumerating the furniture of his city-house, a
catalogue which throws much curious light upon our present subject:—

———————— "My house within the city,
Is richly furnished with plate and gold;
Basons and ewers, to lave her dainty hands;
My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry:
In ivory coffers I have stuffed my crowns;
In cypress chests my arras, counter points,
Costly apparel, tents, and canopies,
Fine linen, Turky cushions boss'd with pearl,
Valence of Venice gold in needle-work,
Pewter and brass, and all things that belong
To house, or housekeeping."[118:A]

Pewter, during the reign of Elizabeth, was considered as a very costly
material, and, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, had been so
rare, as to be hired by the year, even for the use of noblemen's houses.[118:B]
The ivory coffers, and cypress chests, mentioned in Gremio's list, were
esteemed, at this period, highly ornamental pieces of furniture for
apartments designed for the reception of visitors. "I have seen," relates Mr.
Steevens, "more than one of these, as old as the time of our poet. They were
richly ornamented on the tops and sides with scroll-work, emblematical
devices, &c. and were elevated on feet."[118:C] Shakspeare has an allusion to
this custom in Twelfth Night, where he speaks of

"Empty trunks, o'er flourished by the Devil."[118:D]

The tables in these apartments, and in the halls of the nobility, were so
constructed as to turn up; being flat leaves, united by hinges, and resting on

tressels, so as to fold into a small compass. Thus Capulet, wanting room for
the dancers in his hall, calls out

"A hall! a hall! give room, and foot it, girls,
More light, ye knaves; and turn the tables up."[118:E]

When dinner, or supper, was served up, these tables were covered with
carpets; hence Gremio exclaims, "Where's the cook? Is supper ready?—Be
the carpets laid?"[118:F]
Pictures constituted a frequent decoration in the rooms of the wealthy;
and there are numerous instances to prove that those which were estimated
as valuable, were protected by curtains. Olivia, addressing Viola in Twelfth
Night, says,—"We will draw the curtain, and shew you the picture[119:A];"
the same imagery occurs in Troilus and Cressida, where Pandarus,
unveiling Cressida, uses almost the same words: "Come draw this curtain,
and let us see your picture[119:B]." The passage, however, which Mr. Douce
has quoted in illustration of this subject, as it decides the point, will
supersede all further reference:—"In Deloney's Pleasant history of Jack of
Newbery, printed before 1597, it is recorded," he remarks, "that 'in a faire
large parlour which was wainscotted round about, Jacke of Newbery had
fifteene faire pictures hanging, which were covered with curtaines of greene
silke, fringed with gold, which he would often shew to his friends.'"[119:C]
The practice of strewing floors with rushes was general before the
introduction of carpets for this purpose, and the first mansions in the
kingdom could boast of nothing superior in this respect. Shakspeare has
many lines in reference to the custom; Glendower, for instance, interpreting
Lady Mortimer's address to her husband, says,

———————— "She bids you
Upon the wanton rushes lay you down."[119:D]

Again Iachimo, rising from the Trunk in Imogen's chamber, exclaims:—

——————————— "Our Tarquin thus
Did softly press the rushes, ere he waken'd
The chastity he wounded;"[119:E]

and lastly, Romeo calls out

"A torch for me: let wantons light of heart,
Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels."[120:A]

Similar allusions abound in our old dramatic poets, one of which we
shall give for the singularity of its comparison: "All the ladies and gallants,"
says Jonson, in his Cynthia's Revels, "lye languishing upon the rushes, like
so many pounded cattle i' the midst of harvest.[120:B]"
The utility of the rush, and the species used for this purpose, will be
illustrated by the following passages:—"Rushes that grow upon dry
groundes," observes Dr. Bulleyne, "be good to strew in halles, chambers,
and galleries, to walke upon, defending apparell, as traynes of gownes and
kertles from dust[120:C];" and Decker tells us of "windowes spread with
hearbs, the chimney drest up with greene boughs, and the floore strewed
with bulrushes."[120:D]
Of the hospitality of the English, and of the style of eating and drinking
in the upper ranks of society, Harrison has given us the following curious,
though general, detail.
"In number of dishes and change of meat," he remarks, "the nobilitie of
England (whose cookes are for the most part musicall headed Frenchmen
and strangers) doo most exceed, sith there is no daie in maner that passeth
over their heads, wherein they have not onelie béefe, mutton, veale, lambe,
kid, porke, conie, capon, pig, or so manie of these as the season yeeldeth:

but also some portion of the red or fallow déere, beside great varietie of fish
and wild foule, and thereto sundrie other delicates wherein the sweet hand
of the seafaring Portingale is not wanting: so that for a man to dine with one
of them, and to tast of everie dish that standeth before him (which few use
to doo, but ech one feedeth upon that meat him best liketh for the time, the
beginning of everie dish notwithstanding being reserved unto the greatest
personage that sitteth at the table, to whome it is drawen up still by the
waiters as order requireth, and from whence it descendeth againe even to
the lower end, whereby each one may tast thereof) is rather to yield unto a
conspiracie with a greate deale of meat for the spéedie suppression of
naturall health, then the use of a necessarie meane to satisfie himselfe with
a competent repast, to susteine his bodie withall.—
"The chiefe part likewise of their dailie provision is brought in before
them (commonlie in silver vessell, if they be of the degree of barons,
bishops and upwards) and placed on their tables, whereof when they have
taken what it pleaseth them, the rest is reserved, and afterward sent downe
to their serving men and waiters, who féed thereon in like sort with
convenient moderation, their reversion also being bestowed upon the poore,
which lie readie at their gates in great numbers to receive the same. This is
spoken of the principall tables whereat the nobleman, his ladie and guestes
are accustomed to sit, beside which they have a certeine ordinarie
allowance daillie appointed for their hals, where the chiefe officers and
household servants (for all are not permitted by custome to waite upon their
master) and with them such inferiour guestes doo feed as are not of calling
to associat the noble man himselfe (so that besides those afore mentioned,
which are called to the principall table, there are commonlie fortie or three
score persons fed in those hals,) to the great reliefe of such poore sutors and
strangers also as oft be partakers thereof and otherwise like to dine hardlie.
As for drinke it is usuallie filled in pots, gobblets, jugs, bols of silver in
noble mens houses, also in fine Venice glasses of all formes, and for want of

these elsewhere in pots of earth of sundrie colours and moulds (whereof
manie are garnished with silver) or at the leastwise in pewter, all which
notwithstanding are seldome set on the table, but each one as necessitie
urgeth, calleth for a cup of such drinke as him listeth to have: so that when
he hath tasted of it he delivered the cup againe to some one of the standers
by, who making it cleane by pouring out the drinke that remaineth, restoreth
it to the cupbord from whence he fetched the same. By this devise,—much
idle tippling is further more cut off, for if the full pots should continuallie
stand at the elbow or neere the trencher, diverse would alwaies be dealing
with them, whereas now they drinke seldome and onelie when necessitie
urgeth, and so avoid the note of great drinking, or often troubling of the
servitors with filling of their bols. Neverthelesse in the noble men's hals,
this order is not used, neither in anie mans house commonlie under the
degree of a knight or esquire of great revenues. It is a world to sée in these
our daies, wherein gold and silver most aboundeth, how that our gentilitie
as lothing those mettals (bicause of the plentie) do now generallie choose
rather the Venice glasses both for our wine and béere, than anie of those
mettals or stone wherein before time we have béene accustomed to drinke,
but such is the nature of man generallie that it most coveteth things difficult
to be atteined; and such is the estimation of this stuffe, that manie become
rich onelie with their new trade unto Murana (a towne neere to Venice situat
on the Adriatike sea) from whence the verie best are dailie to be had, and
such as for beautie doo well neare match the christall or the ancient
Murrhina vasa, whereof now no man hath knowledge. And as this is seene
in the gentilitie, so in the wealthie communaltie the like desire of glasse is
not neglected."[122:A]
To this interesting sketch a few particulars shall be added in order to
render the picture more complete; and, in the first place, we shall give an
account, from an eye-witness, of the ceremonies accompanying the dinner-

table of Elizabeth. "While the Queen was still at prayers," relates Hentzner,
"we saw her table set out with the following solemnity:
"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 with the utmost veneration, 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-seller, a plate and bread; when they had kneeled,
as the others had done, and placed what was brought upon the table, they
too 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 yeoman of the guards entered, bareheaded, 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 dines and sups alone with very few
attendants."[123:A]

The strict regularity and temperance which prevailed in the court of
Elizabeth, were by no means characteristic of that of her successor, who, in
his convivial moments, too often grossly transgressed the bounds of
sobriety. When Christian IV., King of Denmark, visited England in July,
1606, the carousals at the palace were carried to a most extravagant height,
and their influence on the higher ranks was such, that "our good English
nobles," remarks Harrington, "whom I never could get to taste good liquor,
now follow the fashion, and wallow in beastly delights. The ladies abandon
their sobriety, and are seen to roll about in intoxication;" accusations which
he fully substantiates whilst relating the following most ludicrous scene:—
"One day," says he, "a great feast was held, and, after dinner, the
representation of Solomon his Temple, and the coming of the Queen of
Sheba was made, or (as I may better say) was meant to have been made,
before their Majesties, by device of the Earl of Salisbury and others.—But,
alas! as all earthly thinges do fail to poor mortals in enjoyment, so did prove
our presentment hereof. The Lady who did play the Queen's part, did carry
most precious gifts to both their Majesties; but, forgetting the steppes
arising to the canopy, overset her caskets into his Danish Majesties lap, and
fell at his feet, tho I rather think it was in his face. Much was the hurry and
confusion; cloths and napkins were at hand, to make all clean. His Majesty
then got up and would dance with the Queen of Sheba; but he fell down and
humbled himself before her, and was carried to an inner chamber and laid
on a bed of state; which was not a little defiled with the presents of the
Queen which had been bestowed on his garments; such as wine, cream,
jelly, beverage, cakes, spices, and other good matters. The entertainment
and show went forward, and most of the presenters went backward, or fell
down; wine did so occupy their upper chambers. Now did appear, in rich
dress, Hope, Faith, and Charity: Hope did assay to speak, but wine rendered
her endeavours so feeble that she withdrew, and hoped the King would
excuse her brevity: Faith was then all alone, for I am certain she was not

joyned with good works, and left the court in a staggering condition:
Charity came to the King's feet, and seemed to cover the multitude of sins
her sisters had committed; in some sorte she made obeysance and brought
giftes, but said she would return home again, as there was no gift which
heaven had not already given his Majesty. She then returned to Hope and
Faith, who were both sick and spewing in the lower hall. Next came
Victory, in bright armour, and presented a rich sword to the King, who did
not accept it, but put it by with his hand; and by a strange medley of
versification, did endeavour to make suit to the King. But Victory did not
triumph long; for, after much lamentable utterance, she was led away like a
silly captive, and laid to sleep in the outer steps of the anti-chamber. Now
did Peace make entry, and strive to get foremoste to the King; but I grieve
to tell how great wrath she did discover unto those of her attendants; and
much contrary to her semblance, most rudely made war with her olive
branch, and laid on the pates of those who did oppose her coming." The
facetious Knight concludes his story by declaring that "in our Queen's days
—I neer did see such lack of good order, discretion, and sobriety, as I have
now done."[125:A]
We have already mentioned in Part the First, Chapter the Fifth of this
work, that the usual hour of dinner, among the upper classes, was eleven
o'clock in the forenoon; and though Harrison, in the passage which we last
quoted from him, describes the provisions as often brought to the tables of
the nobility served on silver, yet wooden trenchers for plates were still
frequently to be found at the most sumptuous tables; thus Harrington in
1592, giving directions to his servants, orders, "that no man waite at the
table without a trencher in his hand, except it be upon good cause, on pain
of 1d."[125:B]
To the silver, gilt plate, and cut glass of Harrison, may be added the use
of china, an article of luxury to which the Clown in Measure for Measure
thus alludes:—"Your honours have seen such dishes; they are not china

dishes, but very good dishes."[125:C] A considerable quantity of china or
porcelain, had been brought into this country, during the reign of Elizabeth,
as part of the cargo of some captured Spanish carracks.[126:A] It appears,
also, that carpet-cloth for tables was, towards the close of our period,
dismissed for table-linen, and that of a quality so fine, that Mrs. Otter, in
Ben Jonson's Silent Woman, which was first acted in 1609, laments having
"stained a damask table-cloth, cost me eighteen pound."[126:B]
With all these luxuries, the reader will be surprised to learn, that forks
were not introduced into this country before 1611. Knives had been in
general use since the year 1563, but for the former the fingers had been the
sole substitute. The honour of this cleanly fashion, must be given to that
singular traveller Thomas Coryat, who in his Crudities informs us, that he
found forks common in Italy. "Hereupon," says he, "I myself thought good
to imitate the Italian fashion, by this forked cutting of meate, not only while
I was in Italy, but also in Germany, and oftentimes in England since I came
home; being once quipped for that frequent using of my forke, by a certaine
learned gentleman, a familiar friend of mine, one M. Laurence Whitaker,
who in his merry humour doubted not to call me at table Furcifer, only for
using a forke at feeding, but for no other cause."[126:C]
The utility of the practice was soon acknowledged, for we find Jonson,
in 1614, speaking of their adoption in his "Devil Is An Ass," where
Meercraft, having mentioned his "project of the forks," Sledge exclaims—

"Forks? what be they?

Meer. The laudable use of forks,
Brought into custom here, as they are in Italy,
To th' sparing o' napkins."[126:D]

To the articles of provision enumerated by Harrison, we may add, that
the bread of this period was of many various kinds, and sometimes
peculiarly fine, especially that made at York. "Bred," says a physician who
wrote in 1572, "of dyvers graines, of divers formes, in divers places be
used:—some in forme of manchet, used of the gentility: some of greate
loves, as is usual among yeomanry, some betweene both, as with the
franklings: some in forme of cakes, as at weddings: some rondes of hogs, as
at upsittings: some simnels, cracknels, and buns, as in the Lent, some in
brode cakes, as the oten cakes in Kendall on yrons: some on slate stones as
in the hye peke: some in frying pans as in Darbyshyre: some betwene yrons
as wapons: some in round cakes as bysket for the ships. But these and all
other the mayne bread of York excelleth, for that it is of the finest floure of
the wheat well tempered, best baked, a patterne of all others the fineste."
[127:A]

Dinners had attained a degree of epicurism which rival those of the
present day; three courses, of which the second consisted of game, and the
third of pastry, creams, and confections, together with a dessert, including
marchpane, (a cake composed of filberts, almonds, pistacho-nuts, pine-
kernels, sugar of roses, and flour) marmalades, pomegranates, oranges,
citrons, apples, pears, raisins, dates, nuts, grapes, &c. &c.[127:B], were
common in the houses of the opulent, nor was any expense spared in
procuring the most luxurious dainties. "Who will not admire," remarks an
Essayist of this age, "our nice dames of London, who must have cherries at
twenty shillings a pound, and pescods at five shillings a pecke, huske
without pease? Yong rabbettes of a spanne, and chickens of an inch?"[127:C]
To such a height, indeed, had sensuality in eating arisen among the
courtiers of James the First, that Osborne, in his "Traditional Memorials" on
the reign of that monarch, informs us, "the Earl of Carlisle was one of the
Quorum, that brought in the vanity of Ante-suppers not heard of in our
Fore-fathers time, and for ought I have read, or at least remember,

unpractised by the most luxurious tyrants. The manner of which was, to
have a board covered at the first entrance of the guests with dishes as high
as a tall man could well reach, filled with the choicest and dearest viands
sea and land could afford: and all this once seen and having feasted the eyes
of the invited, was in a manner thrown away, and fresh set on the same
height, having only this advantage of the other, that it was hot. I cannot
forget one of the attendants of the K. that at a feast, made by this monster in
excess, eat to his single share a whole pie reckoned to my Lord at ten
pounds."[128:A]
The extravagance and excess of refection with regard to eatables, must,
however, we are sorry to say, yield to those which accompanied the use, or
rather the abuse, of vinous liquors. The propensity of the English of his
times to drunkenness, has been frequently commented on by Shakspeare;
Iago, in reference to a drinking-catch which he had just sung, says, "I
learned it in England, where (indeed) they are most potent in potting; your
Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander,—Drink, ho!—are
nothing to your English.
Cass. Is your Englishman so expert in his drinking?
Iago. Why, he drinks you, with facility, your Dane dead drunk; he sweats
not to overthrow your Almain; he gives your Hollander a vomit, ere the
next pottle can be filled[128:B];" a charge which seems to be confirmed by
the sober testimony of Gascoigne,—"The Almaynes," he observes, "with
their smale Rhenish wine, are contented; but we must have March beere,
double beere, dagger ale, bracket, &c. Yea, wine itself is not sufficient, but
sugar, lemons, and spices, must be drowned thereinne!"[129:A] Yet, it is but
fair to subjoin, as an acknowledged fact, that we derived this vinosity, as
Heywood terms it, from the Danes; "they," says he, "have made a
profession thereof from antiquity, and are the first upon record that brought
their wassel-bowles and elbowe-deep healthes into this land."[129:B]

Of the consumption of wine, a striking estimate may be formed, from
part of a letter addressed by the Earl of Shrewsbury to the Marquis of
Winchester and Sir Walter Mildmay, dated January, 1569:—"It may please
you to understaund," says His Lordship, "that whereas I have had a certen
ordinary allowaunce of wine, amongs other noble men, for expenses in my
howsehold, wtout imposte; The charg˜s daily that I do nowe susteyn, and
have done all this yere past, well knowen by reason of the Quene of Scotts,
are so grete therein as I am compelled to be now a suter unto yow that ye
woll please to have a friendlie considerac˜on unto the necessitie of my large
expenses. Truly two tonnes in a monthe have not hitherto sufficed
ordinarily." "This passage," observes Mr. Lodge, "will serve to correct a
vulgar error, relating to the consumption of wine in those days, which,
instead of being less, appears to have been, at least in the houses of the
great, even more considerable than that of the present time. The good
people who tell us that Queen Elizabeth's Maids of Honour breakfasted on
roast beef, generally add, that wine was then used in England as a medicine,
for that it was sold only by the apothecaries. The latter assertion, though
founded on a fact, seems to have led to a mistake in the former; for the
word Apothecary, from the Greek Αποθήκη, repositorium, is applicable to
any shopkeeper, or warehouseman, and was probably once used in that
general sense."[129:C] It appears, however, from Decker's Tracts, that
apothecaries, in the modern acceptation of the word, sold both wine and
tobacco, and that their shops formed the fashionable lounge of the day:
—"here you must observe to know in what state tobacco is in town, better
than the merchants; and to discourse of the apothecaries where it is to be
sold; and to be able to speak of their wines, as readily as the apothecary
himself reading the barbarous hand of a doctor."[130:A] "Some lie in
ambush, to note what apothecary's shop he (the gallant) resorts to every
morning."[130:B]

The variety of wines in the days of Shakspeare has not since been
exceeded, or, perhaps, even equalled. Harrison mentions fifty-six French
wines, and thirty-six Spanish, Italian, &c., to which must be added several
home-made wines, such as Ypocras, Clarey, Braket, &c. &c., for which
receipts may be found in Arnold's Chronicle.
Among the foreign wines used at this period, none have attracted so
much notice, or so much controversy, as the celebrated beverage of Falstaff,
Sack. Whether this was a dry or a sweet wine has been left undecided by the
commentators, after much elaborate and contradictory disquisition. If we
may repose, however, on the authority of Gervase Markham's "English
Housewife," a book published very shortly after the death of Shakspeare,
and probably written several years before that event, a book professing to
contain "the opinions of the greatest Physicians," many years antecedent to
the Dedication which includes this assertion[130:C], the question must be
considered as finally settled. This author, in his fourth chapter, entitled,
"The ordering, preserving, and helping of all sorts of Wines, and first of the
choice of sweet Wines," opens the subject by declaring, that he had derived
his knowledge on wines from a vintner "profest skilful in the trade," and he
then immediately proceeds, addressing the housewife, to speak first of the
election of sweet wines; "she must," says he, "be carefull that the Malmseys
be full wines, pleasant, well hewed and fine: that Bastard be fat, and strong,
if it be tawney it skils not: for the tawny Bastards be always the sweetest.
Muscadine must be great, pleasant and strong with a sweet scent, and with
Amber colour. Sack if it be Seres (as it should be) you shall know it by the
mark of a cork burned on one side of the bung, and they be ever full gage,
and so are other Sacks, and the longer they lye, the better they be."[131:A]
From this passage we learn three circumstances relative to Sack: 1stly,
that Sack was a sweet wine; 2dly, that Seres, or Xeres, Sack, or what
Shakspeare, in 1597, calls "a good sherris-sack," a wine manufactured at
Xeres in Spain, was the most esteemed of its kind; and, 3dly, that other

Sacks were in use in this country. Still further light is thrown upon this topic
in a subsequent page, where we are told, when enumerating the sweet wines
in contradistinction to those of a sharp taste, that Sacks are of three species
—"Your best Sacks are of Seres in Spain, your smaller of Galicia and
Portugall, your strong Sacks are of the Islands of the Canaries, and of
Malligo."[131:B] It is, therefore, to be inferred, that, though all these Sacks
were sweet, the sweetest, as well as the strongest, were the Canary and
Malaga; next to these in saccharine impregnation, and best in flavour, the
Xeres; and lastly, the weakest and least sweet, were the Galicia and
Portugal.
The conclusion we consequently draw from these premises is, that the
Sherris-Sack of Falstaff was Spanish Xeres, a wine not dry, like our modern
Sherry, but sweet, and though not so strong or so sweet as the Sacks
brought from Canary and Malaga, superior in flavour to both.
It may be objected to this deduction, that if Sherris-Sack were a sweet
wine, it would not have been necessary to add sugar to it, an article which
Sir John ever mingled with his favourite potation.[131:C] This will not prove
valid, however, when we recollect that, in the first place, Xeres was not the
sweetest of the Sacks, and, in the second, that in Shakspeare's time it was
the custom to mix sugar with every species of wine; "gentlemen garrawse,"
observes Fynes Moryson, "only in wine, with which they mix sugar, which
I never observed in any other place or kingdom to be used for that purpose.
And because the taste of the English is thus delighted with sweetness, the
wines in taverns (for I speak not of merchantes or gentlemen's cellars) are
commonly mixed at the filling thereof, to make them pleasant."[132:A] A
similar partiality for sugar in wine is noticed by Paul Hentzner[132:B], as one
of the peculiarities of the English; and from these passages Mr. Reed
deduces the legitimate inference that the fondness of the English nation for
sugar, at this epoch, was so great as to induce them to mix it even with
sweet wines; "if," says he, "the English drank only rough wine with sugar,

there appears nothing extraordinary, or worthy of particular notice.—The
addition of sugar, even to sack, might, perhaps, to a taste habituated to
sweets, operate only in a manner to improve the flavour of the wine."[132:C]
We find also from Sir John's comments on his favourite liquor, that he
added not only sugar, but a toast to it[132:D]; that he had an insuperable
aversion to its being mulled with eggs, vehemently exclaiming, "I'll no
pullet-sperm in my brewage[132:E];" and that he abominated its
sophistication with lime, declaring that "a coward is worse than a cup of
sack with lime in it[132:F];" an ingredient which the vinters used to increase
its strength and durability.
To this deterioration, our witty Knight, as his convivial hours were
usually spent in taverns, was, of course, peculiarly subject. Houses of this
description were very numerous in our author's days, and, there is reason to
think, fully as much frequented as are similar places in the present age. The
Boars Head Tavern in Eastcheap, and the Mermaid in Cornhill,
immortalised in the writings of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, and Fletcher, are
enumerated in a long list of taverns given us in an old black-letter quarto,
entitled Newes from Bartholomew Fayre[133:A]; and to these we must add, as
of equal poetical celebrity, the Tabard Inn or Tavern, noticed by Stowe, in
1598, as the most ancient in Southwark[133:B], and endeared to us as the
"Hosterie" of the never-to-be-forgotten pilgrims, in that delightful work, the
Canterbury Tales of Chaucer.
A tavern, says a writer, who lived in these times, and who published in
1628, "is the common consumption of the afternoon, and the murderer or
maker-away of a rainy day.—To give you the total reckoning of it; it is the
busy man's recreation, the idle man's business, the melancholy man's
sanctuary, the stranger's welcome, the inns-of-court man's entertainment,
the scholar's kindness, and the citizen's curtesy. It is the study of sparkling
wits, and a cup of canary their book."[134:A]

At these places were regular ordinaries, which Decker tells us were of
three kinds; namely, "an ordinary of the largest reckoning, whither most of
your courtly gallants do resort;" a twelve-penny ordinary frequented by "the
justice of peace or young knight;" and a three-penny ordinary, "to which
your London usurer, your stale batchelor, and your thrifty attorney do
resort."[134:B]
From the same author we also learn, that it was usual in taverns,
especially in the city, to send presents of wine from one room to another, as
a complimentary mark of friendship:—"Enquire," directs he, "what gallants
sup in the next room; and, if they be any of your acquaintance, do not you,
after the city fashion, send them in a pottle of wine and your name."[134:C]
This custom, too, is recorded by Shakspeare, as a mode of introduction to a
stranger, where Bardolph, at the Garter Inn, Windsor, addressing Falstaff,
says,—"Sir John, there's one master Brook below would fain speak with
you, and be acquainted with you; and hath sent your worship a morning's
draught of sack[134:D];" a passage which Mr. Malone has illustrated by the
following nearly contemporary anecdote:—"Ben Jonson," he relates, "was
at a tavern, and in comes Bishop Corbet, (but not so then,) into the next
room. Ben Jonson calls for a quart of raw wine, and gives it to the tapster.
'Sirrah,' says he, 'carry this to the gentleman in the next chamber, and tell
him, I sacrifice my service to him.' The fellow did, and in those words.
'Friend,' says Dr. Corbet, 'I thank him for his love; but 'pr'ythee tell him
from me that he is mistaken; for sacrifices are always burnt."[134:E]
The most singular and offensive practice, however, at least to modern
manners, which occurred at this period in taverns, a practice common, too,
even among the higher ranks, is likewise related by Decker, when giving
advice "How a Gallant should behave himself in an Ordinary" of the first
class:—"You may rise in dinner time," he tells his "courtly gallant," "to ask
for a closestool, protesting to all the gentlemen that it costs you an hundred
pounds a year in physick, besides the annual pension which your wife

allows her doctor; and, if you please, you may, as your great French lord
doth, invite some special friend of yours from the table to hold discourse
with you as you sit in that withdrawing chamber; from whence being
returned again to the board, you shall sharpen the wits of all the eating
gallants about you, and do them great pleasure to ask what pamphlets or
poems a man might think fittest to wipe his tail with."[135:A] Gross as this
habit now appears to us, it was prevalent upon the continent until nearly the
close of the last century.
To the reign of Elizabeth is to be attributed the introduction of a luxury,
which has since become almost universal, the custom of using, or, as it was
then called, of taking tobacco. This herb, which was first brought into
England by Sir Francis Drake, about the year 1586, met with an early and
violent opposition, and gave birth to a multitude of invectives and satires,
among which the most celebrated is King James's "Counterblast to
Tobacco." This monarch entertained the most rooted antipathy to the use of
tobacco in any form, and closes his treatise by asserting that it is "a custom
loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, harmfull to the braine, dangerous
to the lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the
horrible Stigian smoake of the pit that is bottomless."[135:B] He also tells us
in another work, that were he to invite the devil to a dinner, "he should have
these three dishes—1. a pig; 2. a poole of ling and mustard; and 3. a pipe of
tobacco for digesture."[136:A]
Tobacco may be said, indeed, to have made many inroads in domestic
cleanliness, and, on this account, to have deservedly incurred the dislike of
that large portion of the female sex on whom the charge of household
economy devolved. "Surely," says James, "smoke becomes a kitchin farre
better than a dining chamber," a remark which is as applicable now as it
was then; but we cannot help smiling when he adds, with his usual
credulity, "and yet it makes a kitchin also oftentimes in the inward parts of
men, soyling and infecting them, with an unctuous and oily kind of soote,

as hath bene found in some great Tobacco takers, that after their death were
opened."[136:B]
Such were, indeed, the tales in common circulation among the lower
orders, and which Ben Jonson has very humorously put into the mouth of
Cob in Every Man in his Humour:—"By Gods me," says the water-bearer,
"I marle what pleasure or felicity they have in taking this roguish tobacco!
It's good for nothing but to choak a man, and fill him full of smoke and
embers: there were four died out of one house last week with taking of it,
and two more the bell went for yesternight; one of them, they say, will ne'er
scape it; he voided a bushel of soot yesterday, upward and downward. By
the stocks, an' there were no wiser men than I, I'd have it present whipping,
man or woman, that should but deal with a tobacco-pipe; why, it will stifle
them all in the end, as many as use it; it's little better than ratsbane or
rosaker."[136:C]
It would appear that the prejudices against the use of this narcotic
required much time for their extirpation; for Burton, who wrote about thirty
years after its introduction, and at the very close of the Shakspearean era,
seems as violent against the common use of tobacco as even James himself:
—"A good vomit," says he, "I confesse, a vertuous herbe, if it be well
qualified, opportunely taken, and medicinally used, but as it is commonly
used by most men, which take it as Tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischiefe,
a violent purger of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish damn'd tobacco,
the ruine and overthrow of body and soule."[137:A]
Notwithstanding this abuse, however, and the edicts of King James
forbidding its consumption in all ale-houses, tobacco soon acquired such
general favour, that Stowe tells us in his Annals, "it was commonly used by
most men and many women;" and James, appealing to his subjects,
exclaims,—"Now how you are by this custome disabled in your goods, let
the gentry of this land beare witnesse, some of them bestowing three, some

foure hundred pounds a yeere upon this precious stinke[137:B];" a sum so
enormous, that we must conclude them to have been as determined smokers
as the Buckinghamshire parson recorded by Lilly, who "was so given over
to tobacco and drink, that when he had no tobacco, he would cut the bell-
ropes and smoke them!"[137:C]
Snuff-taking was as much in fashion as smoking; and the following
passage from Decker proves, that the gallants of his day were as
extravagant and ridiculous in their use of it as our modern beaux, whether
we regard the splendour of their boxes, or their affectation in applying the
contents; it appears also to have been customary to take snuff immediately
before dinner. "Before the meat come smoking to the board, our gallant
must draw out his tobacco-box, 'and' the ladle for the cold snuff into the
nostril,—all which artillery may be of gold or silver, if he can reach to the
price of it;—then let him shew his several tricks in taking it, as the whiff,
the ring, &c. for these are complements that gain gentlemen no mean
respect."[137:D] "It is singular," remarks Dr. Nott, alluding to the general use
of tobacco at this period, "when the introduction of this new indulgence had
so engaged the pen of almost every cotemporary playwright and
pamphleteer, nay, even of royalty itself, that Shakspeare should have been
totally silent upon it."[138:A]
The residue of the Domestic Economy of this era may be included under
the articles of servants and miscellaneous household arrangements.
In the days of Elizabeth servants were more numerous, and considered
as a more essential mark of gentility, than at any subsequent period. "The
English," observes Hentzner, "are lovers of shew, liking to be followed
wherever they go by whole troops of servants, who wear their master's arms
in silver, fastened to their left arms."[138:B] They were, also, usually
distinguished by blue coats; thus Grumio, enquiring for his master's
servants, says,—"Call forth Nathaniel, Joseph, Nicholas, Philip, Walter,

Sugarsop, and the rest; let their heads be sleekly combed, their blue coats
brushed."[138:C] We learn, however, from Fynes Moryson, that both silver
badges and blue coats went out of fashion in the reign of James the First;
"the servants of gentlemen," he informs us, "were wont to weare blew
coates, with their master's badge of silver on the left sleeve, but now they
most commonly weare clokes garded with lace, all the servants of one
family wearing the same livery for colour and ornament."[138:D]
The very strict regulations to which servants were subjected in the
sixteenth century, and the admirable order preserved in the household of the
upper classes at that time, will be illustrated in a very satisfactory and
entertaining manner, by the "Orders for Household Servantes; first devised
by John Haryngton, in the yeare 1566, and renewed by John Haryngton,
Sonne of the saide John, in the yeare 1592: the saide John, the Sonne, being
then High Shrieve of the County of Somerset."
"Imprimis, That no servant bee absent from praier, at
morning or evening, without a lawfull excuse, to be alledged
within one day after, upon payne to forfeit for every tyme 2d.
2. "Item, That none sweare any othe, uppon paine for every
othe 1d.
3. "Item, That no man leave any doore open, that he findeth
shut, without there bee cause, upon payne for every tyme 1d.
4. "Item, That none of the men be in bed, from our Lady-day
to Michaelmas, after 6 of the clock in the morning: nor out of
his bed after 10 of the clock at night; nor, from Michaelmas till
our Lady-day, in bed after 7 in the morning; nor out after 9 at
night, without reasonable cause, on paine of 2d.
5. "Item, That no man's bed be unmade, nor fire or candle-
box uncleane, after 8 of the clock in the morning, on paine of

1d.
6. "Item, That no man make water within either of the courts,
upon paine of, every tyme it shalbe proved, 1d.
7. "Item, That no man teach any of the children any unhonest
speeche, or baudie word, or othe, on paine of 4d.
8. "Item, That no man waite at the table, without a trencher in
his hand, except it be uppon some good cause, on paine of 1d.
9. "Item, That no man appointed to waite at my table, be
absent that meale, without reasonable cause, on paine of 1d.
10. "Item, If any man breake a glasse, hee shall answer the
price thereof out of his wages; and, if it bee not known who
breake it, the buttler shall pay for it, on paine of 12d.
11. "Item, The table must bee covered halfe an hour before 11
at dinner, and 6 at supper, or before, on paine of 2d.
12. "Item, That meate bee readie at 11, or before, at dinner;
and 6, or before, at supper, on paine of 6d.
13. "Item, That none be absent, without leave or good cause,
the whole day, or any part of it, on paine of 4d.
14. "Item, That no man strike his fellow, on paine of losse of
service; nor revile or threaten, or provoke another to strike, on
paine of 12d.
15. "Item, That no man come to the kitchen without
reasonable cause, on paine of 1d. and the cook likewyse to
forfeit 1d.
16. "Item, That none toy with the maids, on paine of 4d.

17. "Item, That no man weare foule shirt on Sunday, nor
broken hose or shooes, or dublett without buttons, on paine of
1d.
18. "Item, That when any strainger goeth hence, the chamber
be drest up againe within 4 hours after, on paine of 1d.
19. "Item, That the hall bee made cleane every day, by eight
in the winter, and seaven in the sommer, on paine of him that
should do it to forfet 1d.
20. "That the court-gate bee shutt each meale, and not opened
during dinner and supper, without just cause, on paine the porter
to forfet for every time 1d.
21. "Item, That all stayrs in the house, and other rooms that
neede shall require, bee made cleane on Fryday after dinner, on
paine of forfeyture of every on whome it shall belong unto, 3d.
"All which sommes shalbe duly paide each quarter-day out of
their wages, and bestowed on the poore, or other godly use."
[140:A]

To the tribe of household servants, must be added, as a constant inmate
in the houses of the great, during the life of Shakspeare, and, indeed, to the
close of the reign of Charles I., that motley personage, the Domestic Fool,
who was an essential part of the entertainment of the fire-side, not only in
the palace and the castle, but in the tavern and the brothel.
The character of the "all-licens'd fool" has been copied from the life,
with his usual naïveté and precision, and with an inexhaustible fund of wit,
in many of the plays of our poet; yet, perhaps, we shall no where find a
more condensed and faithful picture of the manners of this once
indispensable source of domestic pleasantry, than what has been given us
by Dr. Lodge:—"This fellow," says he, "in person is comely, in apparell

courtly, but in behaviour a very ape, and no man; his studie is to coine bitter
jeasts, or to shew antique motions, or to sing baudie sonnets and ballads:
give him a little wine in his head, he is continually flearing and making of
mouthes: he laughs intemperately at every little occasion, and dances about
the house, leaps over tables, out-skips mens heads, trips up his companion's
heeles, burns sack with a candle, and hath all the feats of a lord of misrule
in the countrie: feed him in his humor, you shall have his heart, in meere
kindnesse he will hug you in his armes, kisse you on the cheeke, and
rapping out an horrible oth, crie God's soule Tum I love you, you know my
poore heart, come to my chamber for a pipe of tabacco, there lives not a
man in this world that I more honour. In these ceremonies you shall know
his courting, and it is a speciall mark of him at the table, he sits and makes
faces."[141:A]
On the passages in this quotation distinguished by Italics, it will be
necessary to offer a brief comment. From Shakspeare we learn that the
apparel of the domestic fool was of two kinds; he had either a parti-
coloured coat fastened round the body by a girdle, with close breeches, and
hose on each leg of different colours; or he wore a long petticoat dyed with
curious tints, and fringed with yellow. With both dresses was generally
connected a hood, covering the whole head, falling over part of the breast
and shoulders, and surmounted with asses ears, or a cocks-comb. Bells and
a bauble were the usual insignia of the character; the former either attached
to the elbows, or the skirt of the coat, and the latter, consisting of a stick,
decorated at one end with a carved fool's head, and having at the other an
inflated bladder, an instrument either of sport or defence.
Bitter jests, provided they were so dressed up, or so connected with
adjunctive circumstances, as to raise a laugh, were at all times allowed; but
it was moreover expected, that their keenness or bitterness should be also
allayed by a due degree of obliquity in the mode of attack, by a careless,
and, apparently, undesigning manner of delivery, and by a playful and frolic

demeanour. For these purposes, fragments of sonnets and ballads were
usually chosen by the fool, as a safe medium through which the necessary
degree of concealment might be given, and the edge of his sarcasm duely
abated; a practice of which Shakspeare has afforded us many instances, and
especially in his Fool in King Lear, whose scraps of old songs fully
exemplify the aim and scope of this favourite of our ancestors.[142:A]
A few household arrangements, in addition to those developed in Sir
John Harrington's orders, shall terminate this branch of our subject.
We have seen, when treating of the domestic economy of the country
squire, that it was usual to take their banquet or dessert, in an arbour of the
garden or orchard; and in town, the nobility and gentry, immediately after
dinner and supper, adjourned to another room, for the purpose of enjoying
their wine and fruit; this practice is alluded to by Shakspeare, in Romeo and
Juliet[142:B]; and Beaufort, in the Unnatural Combat of Massinger, says:—

"We'll dine in the great room, but let the musick
And banquet be prepared here;"[142:C]

a custom which it is astonishing the delicacy and refinement of modern
manners have not generally adopted.
As our ancestors, during the greater part of the period we are
considering, possessed not the conveniency of eating with forks, and were,
therefore, compelled to make use of their fingers, it became an essential
point of good manners, to wash the hands immediately before dinner and
supper, as well as afterwards: thus Petruchio, on the entrance of his servants
with supper, says, addressing his wife,—

"Come, Kate, and wash, and welcome heartily."[143:A]

In the fifteenth item of Harrington's Orders, we find that no man was
allowed to come to the kitchen without reasonable cause, an injunction
which may appear extraordinary; but, in those days, it was customary, in
order to prevent the cook being disturbed in his important duties, to keep
the rest of the men aloof, and, when dinner was ready, he summoned them
to carry it on the table, by knocking loudly on the dresser with his knife:
thus in Massinger's Unnatural Combat, Beaufort's steward says,—

"When the dresser, the cook's drum, thunders, Come on,
The service will be lost else;"[143:B]

a practice which gave rise to the phraseology, he knocks to the dresser, or,
he warns to the dresser, as synonymous with the annunciation that, "dinner
is ready."
It was usual, also, especially where the domestic fool was retained, to
keep an ape or a monkey, as a companion for him, and he is frequently
represented with this animal on his shoulders. Monkeys, likewise, appear to
have been an indispensable part of a lady's establishment, and, accordingly,
Ben Jonson, in his Cynthia's Revels, represents one of his characters as
asserting, "the gentleman (I'll undertake with him) is a man of fair living,
and able to maintain a lady in her two caroches a day, besides pages,
monkeys, parachitoes, with such attendants as she shall think meet for her
turn."[144:A]
Beside monkeys and parachitoes, this quotation also proves, that
caroches, a species of coach, were common in 1600, when Jonson's play
was first acted. The coach and caroch, vehicles differing probably rather in
size than form, are thus distinguished by Green, who in his Tu Quoque,
1641, speaks of

——————— "the keeping of a coach
For country, and caroch for London;"[144:B]

and, indeed, in 1595, they seem to have been equally general, for the author
of Quippes for upstart newfangled Gentlewemen, says:—

"Our wantons now in coaches dash
From house to house, from street to street."[144:C]

The era of their introduction into this country has been recorded by
Taylor, the water-poet. "In the year 1564," he remarks, "one William
Boonen, a Dutchman, brought first the use of coaches hither, and the said
Boonen was Queene Elizabeth's coachman; for indeede a coach was a
strange monster in those days, and the sight of it put both horse and man
into amazement: some said it was a great crab shell brought out of China,
and some imagined it to be one of the Pagan Temples, in which the
Cannibals adored the divell; but at last those doubts were cleared, and
coach-making became a substantial trade."[144:D]
So substantial, indeed, had this trade become in 1601, that on the 7th of
November of the same year, an act was introduced into the House of Lords,
"to restrain the excessive and superfluous use of coaches, within this
realm[145:A];" it was rejected, however, on the second reading, and the trade
of coach-making went on progressively increasing.
The extravagancy of domestic economy, with regard to these machines,
and the servants who were deemed necessary, as their accompaniment, is
strikingly depicted in the following extract from a letter written shortly after
their marriage, by Lady Compton, to her husband, William Lord Compton,
a few years subsequent to the death of Shakspeare. After several items
equally moderate with those we are going to transcribe, she thus proceeds:
—"Alsoe, I will have 6 or 8 gentlemen; and I will have my twoe coaches,

one lyned with velvett to myselfe, wth 4 very fayre horses, and a coache for
my woemen, lyned wth sweete cloth, one laced wth gold, the other wth
scarlett, and laced with watched lace and silver, wth 4 good horses. Alsoe, I
will have twoe coachmen, one for my owne coache, the other for my
women. Alsoe, att any tyme when I travayle, I will be allowed not only
carroches, and spare horses for me and my women, but I will have such
carryadgs, as shal be fittinge for all orderly; not pestringe my things wth my
woemens, nor theirs wth either chambermayds, or theirs wth wase maids.
Alsoe, for laundresses, when I travayle I will have them sent away before
wth the carryadgs to see all safe, and the chambermayds I will have goe
before wth the groomes, that a chamber may be ready, sweete and cleane.
Alsoe, for that yt is indecent to croud upp myself wth my gentl. usher in my
coache, I will have him to have a convenyent horse to attend me either in
citty or country. And I must have 2 footemen. And my desire is, that you
defray all the chardges for me."[145:B]
Of the Manners and Customs of this period, the next branch of our
present enquiry, we shall open a short review, by sketching the prominent
features of Elizabeth's personal character, which must, necessarily, have had
great influence, not only on her courtiers, but on society at large. As a
monarch, she was, with few exceptions, truly worthy of admiration; but, as
a woman, she often exhibits such a series of weaknesses and frailties, as
must excite astonishment, as well from the force of contrast, as from their
own turpitude and folly.
The most valuable and praise-worthy part of her private character, her
literary accomplishments, her love of learning, and her encouragement of
letters, together with the influence which they exerted over the minds of her
subjects, have been considered, at some length, in the first volume of this
work[146:A]; and to the favourable side of the picture, we must here add, that
she was equally eminent for some acquirements more peculiarly feminine.
Among these, her skill in needle-work has been more than once particularly

celebrated, her excellence in which stimulated the ladies of her reign to
more than ordinary exertion in this useful department. "The various kinds of
needle-work practised by our indefatigable grandmothers," observes Mr.
Douce, "if enumerated, would astonish even the most industrious of our
modern ladies;" and he adds, that "many curious books of patterns for lace
and all sorts of needle-work were formerly published."[146:B]
But this rare example, in a monarch, of industry and economy, and the
still more important acquisitions of literature and science, were
overwhelmed by a host of foibles, among which, none were more
remarkable than her extreme vanity and coquetry, and at a period too, when
she had reason to expect, from her infirmities, and the common law of
nature, that death was not far distant. To be thought beautiful, young, and
agile, and an object of amorous affection, to the last moment of her
existence, seems to have been her chief ambition as a woman; nor could
any language on these topics, when addressed to her, be too complimentary,
amatory, or glowing. When sixty years of age, Raleigh thus speaks of her, in
a letter intended for her perusal:—"I that was wont to see her riding like
Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle wind blowing
her fair hair about her pure cheeks, like a nymph, sometimes sitting in the
shade, like a goddess, sometimes singing like an angel, sometimes playing
like Orpheus; behold the sorrow of this world! once amiss hath bereaved
me of all[147:A];" and when sixty-eight, Lord Mountjoy, Lord Deputy of
Ireland, thus addresses her:—"When I have done all that I can, the
uttermost effects of my labours doe appeare so little to my owne zeale to
doe more, that I am often ashamed to present them unto your faire and
royall eyes. I beseeche your Majestie to thinke, that in a matter of so great
importance, my affection will not suffer me to commit so grosse a fault
against your service, as to doe any thing, for the which I am not able to give
you a very good account, the which above all things, I desire to do at your
owne royall feete, and that your service here, may give me leave to fill my

eyes with their onely deere and desired object."[147:B] It was at the same
advanced period of life, too, when the sister of Lord Essex, interceding for
her brother's life, tells Her Majesty,—"Early did I hope this morning, to
have had mine eyes blessed with your majesty's beauty.—That her brother's
life, his love, his service to her beauties, did not deserve so hard a
punishment. That he would be disabled from ever serving again his sacred
goddess! whose excellent beauties and perfections ought to feel more
compassion."[148:A]
Her affectation of youth, in order to render language such as this
somewhat appropriate, was carried to the most ridiculous excess; "there is
almost none," remarks Harrington, "that wayted in Queene Elizabeth's
court, and observed any thing, but can tell that it pleased her much to seeme
and to be thought, and to be told, that she looked younge;" and he then
relates, in illustration of his assertion, that when Bishop Rudd preached
before the Queen, in Lent, 1596, after giving an arithmetical description,
with a manifest allusion to Her Majesty, of the grand climacterical year, he
put a prayer into the mouth of the Queen, in which she is represented as
quoting, with reference to herself, the following passage from Ecclesiastes:
When the grinders shall be few in number, and they wax darke that looke
out of the windowes, &c., and the daughters of singing shall be abased; but,
the sermon being concluded, "the Queene (as the manner was) opened the
window, (of her closet) but she was so far from giving him thanks, or good
countenance, that she said plainly, 'he should have kept his arithmetick for
himselfe; but I see (said she) the greatest clerks are not the wisest men;' and
so went away for the time discontented." Three days afterwards, however,
she declared before Harrington and her courtiers, that "the good bishop was
deceaved in supposing she was so decayed in her limbs and senses, as
himselfe, perhaps, and other of that age are wont to be; she thankt God that
neither her stomache nor strength, nor her voyce for singing, nor fingering
for instruments, nor lastly, her sight was any whit decayed."[148:B]

Her strength and agility, she endeavoured to prove, were not diminished,
by dancing, or attempting to dance, to nearly the end of her reign. Being
present at Lord Herbert's marriage, in 1600, after supper, dancing
commenced by ladies and gentlemen in masques; and Mrs. Fetton, one of
the masquers, "went to the Queen, and woed her to dawnce. Her Majesty
asked what she was? Affection, she said. Affection, said the Queen, is false.
Yet her Majestie rose and dawnced!"[149:A] She was now in her sixty-ninth
year!
Nor was she less artful than vain; cunning and finesse might be often
necessary in her political capacity, but she carried the same wiliness and
duplicity into all the relations of private life. Sir John Harrington has
admirably drawn her disposition in these respects, and has painted her
blandishments, her mutability of temper, and her deceptive conduct, with a
masterly pencil. "Hir mynde," he observes, "was oftime like the gentle aire
that comethe from the westerly pointe in a summer's morn; 'twas sweete and
refreshinge to all arounde her:—again, she coulde pute forthe suche
alteracions,—as lefte no doubtynges whose daughter she was.—By art and
nature together so blended, it was difficulte to fynde hir right humour at any
tyme;—for few knew how to aim their shaft against her cunning.—I have
seen her smile," he adds, "soothe with great semblance of good likinge to
all arounde, and cause everie one to open his moste inwarde thought to her;
when, on a sudden, she would ponder in pryvate on what had passed, write
down all their opinions, draw them out as occasion required, and sometyme
disprove to their faces what had been delivered a month before. Hence she
knew every one's parte, and by thus fishinge, as Hatton sayed, she caught
many poor fish, who little knew what snare was laid for them."[149:B]
Of her boundless inclination to circumvent and deceive, a most ludicrous
instance is related by Sir Arthur Wheldon, who tells us, that when Sir Roger
Aston was sent with letters from James to the Queen (which was often the
case), "he did never come to deliver any—but he was placed in the Lobby;

the hangings being turned him, (lifted up) where he might see the Queene
dancing to a little fiddle, which was to no other end, than he should tell his
master by her youthfull disposition, how likely he was to come to the
possession of the Crown he so much thirsted after."[150:A]
Extreme jealousy was another leading feature in the manners of
Elizabeth, which, far from being the result of her exalted rank, was, indeed,
most apparent in her domestic life and relations. She could bear no female
near her who, in beauty, accomplishments, or dress, was likely either to
surpass or rival her; and the death of the unfortunate Mary may be
attributed rather to an inextinguishable envy of her personal charms, than to
any apprehensions of the establishment of her claim to the throne of
England. How anxious she was to be thought more beautiful and
accomplished than her sister Queen, is vividly delineated by Sir John
Melvill, who, in his numerous interviews with Elizabeth, during his
residence in London, describes her as changing her dress for him every day;
as dancing before him, and playing on the virginals, merely for the purpose
of ascertaining whether he thought she or Mary most excelled in dress,
dancing, and music. She even went so far as to enquire, whether he
considered her hair or his mistress's to be the fairest and most entitled to
admiration, and, at length, asked him which was tallest, and, on his
answering, that the Scottish Queen surpassed her in height,—"Then," saith
she, "she is too high; for I myself am neither too high, nor too low[150:B]."
Nothing is better known in our history than Elizabeth's personal
chastisement of the unhappy Earl of Essex; and so little, indeed, was she
accustomed, on any occasion, to the control of her passions, that her
courtiers daily dreaded similar inflictions. "The Queene seemede troubled
to daye," says Harrington; "Hatton came out from her presence with ill
countenance, and pulled me aside by the girdle, and saide, in secret waie, 'If
you have any suite to daie, I praye you put it aside, The sunne doth not

shine.' 'Tis this accursede Spanishe businesse; so will not I adventure her
Highnesse choller, leste she shoulde collar me also."[151:A]
Even in the expression of her dislike on such trivial matters as the cut of
a coat, or the depth of a fringe, she spared neither the public exposure of her
courtiers, nor the adoption of the most masculine and vindictive contempt.
"The Queene loveth to see me," says Sir John Harrington, "in my laste frize
jerkin, and saithe 'tis well enough cutt. I will have another made liken to it. I
do remember she spit on Sir Mathew's fringed clothe, and said, the fooles
wit was gone to ragges.—Heav'n spare me from suche jibinge."[151:B]
If such petulant and rough treatment fell to the lot of her courtiers in
public, we may rest assured, that in private, her domestics, and ladies of
honour, experienced not a milder fate. Manual correction, indeed, we are
told, was a frequent resource with Her Majesty, and even when chiding for
"small neglects," Fenton tells us, in a letter to Sir John Harrington, dated
May, 1597, that it was "in such wise, as to make these fair maids often cry
and bewail in piteous sort."[151:C] In short, to adopt the language of Sir
Robert Cecil, who had an intimate knowledge both of her public and private
character, she "was more than a man, and (in troth) sometyme less than a
woman."[151:D]
Elizabeth, indeed, possessed many qualities of the most exalted rank,
and her courage, magnanimity, prudence, and political wisdom, were such
as to redeem the foibles which we have enumerated. They were virtues, of
which her successor was totally destitute; for the manners of James may be
truly painted by the epithets, frivolity, pusillanimity, extravagance,
pedantry, and credulity.
Some of the most striking traits in his character have been drawn with
great strength and vivacity in Sir John Harrington's description of an
interview with this monarch, in January, 1607:—"He enquyrede," says he,
"muche of lernynge, and showede me his owne in suche sorte, as made me

remember my examiner at Cambridge aforetyme. He soughte muche to
knowe my advances in philosophie, and utterede profounde sentences of
Aristotle, and suche lyke wryters, whiche I had never reade, and which
some are bolde enoughe to saye, others do not understand: but this I must
passe by. The Prince did nowe presse my readinge to him parte of a canto in
Ariosto; praysede my utterance, and said he had been informede of manie,
as to my lernynge, in the tyme of the Queene. He asked me 'what I thoughte
pure witte was made of; and whom it did best become?' Whether a Kynge
shoulde not be the best clerke in his own countrie; and, if this lande did not
entertayne goode opinion of his lernynge and good wisdome?' His Majestie
did much presse for my opinion touchinge the power of Satane in matter of
witchcraft; and askede me, with muche gravitie,—'If I did trulie
understande, why the devil did worke more with anciente women than
others?' I did not refraine from a scurvey jeste, and even saide
(notwithstandinge to whom it was said) that—we were taught hereof in
scripture, where it is tolde, that the devil walketh in dry places.—His
Highnesse tolde me the Queene his mothers deathe was visible in Scotlande
before it did really happen, being, as he saide, 'spoken of in secrete by those
whose power of sight presentede to them a bloodie heade dancinge in the
aire.' He then did remarke muche on this gifte, and saide he had soughte out
of certaine bookes a sure waie to attaine knowledge of future chances.
Hereat, he namede many bookes, which I did not knowe, nor by whom
written; but advisede me not to consult some authors which woulde leade
me to evill consultations—at lengthe he saide: Now, Sir, you have seene my
wisdome in some sorte, and I have pried into yours. I praye you, do me
justice in your reporte, and in good season, I will not fail to add to your
understandinge, in suche pointes as I maye find you lacke amendment."
[152:A]
This is an extract which lays open the heart of James, and speaks
volumes on the subject.

The manners of the reigning monarch imperceptibly give a colouring to
those of every class of society, stronger in proportion to its approximation
to the source; a remark which is fully exemplified in the females of the
reign of Elizabeth, those especially who constituted, or were near, the court,
copying, according to their ability, the virtues, accomplishments, and
foibles of the Queen. They were learned, skilled in needle-work, and wrote
a beautiful hand, in emulation of the Queen's, which, in the earlier period of
her life, was peculiarly elegant; but they were, also, vain, capricious, and in
their habits and language often masculine and coarse. It was customary for
ladies of the first rank to give manual correction to their servants of both
sexes; a practice of which Shakspeare has given us an instance in his
Twelfth-Night, where Maria, alluding to Malvolio's whimsical appearance,
says, "I know my lady will strike him."[153:A] Nor were often their daily
occupations, or their language, when provoked, in the least degree more
feminine; we are told that Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, "was a
builder, a buyer and seller of estates, a money lender, a farmer, and a
merchant of lead, coals and timber;" and her daughter Mary, who married
Gilbert, seventh Earl of Shrewsbury, sent the following message to Sir
Thomas Stanhope, with whom she had quarrelled, by one George
Williamson, which message was "delivered by the said Williamson,
February 15, 1592, in the presence of certain persons whose names were
subscribed—'My Lady hath commanded me to say thus much to you. That
though you be more wretched, vile, and miserable, than any creature living;
and, for your wickedness, become more ugly in shape than the vilest toad in
the world; and one to whom none of reputation would vouchsafe to send
any message; yet she hath thought good to send thus much to you—that she
be contented you should live, (and doth nowaies wish your death) but to
this end: that all the plagues and miseries that may befall any man may light
upon such a caitiff as you are; and that you should live to have all your
friends forsake you; and, without your great repentance, which she looketh

not for because your hath been so bad, you will be damned perpetually in
hell fire.' With many other opprobrious and hatefull words, which could not
be remembered, because the bearer would deliver it but once, as he said he
was commanded; but said if he had failed in any thing, it was in speaking it
more mildly, and not in terms of such disdain as he was commanded."[154:A]
Of the male population of this period, the manners seem to have been
compounded from the characters of the two sovereigns. Like Elizabeth,
they were brave, magnanimous, and prudent; and sometimes, like James,
credulous, curious, and dissipated. On the virtues, happily from their
notoriety, there is little occasion to comment; foreigners, as well as natives,
bearing testimony to their existence: thus Hentzner tells us,—"The English
are serious, like the Germans;—they are powerful in the field, successful
against their enemies, impatient of any thing like slavery."[154:B] But of the
foibles and vices, as more evanescent and mutable, it may be interesting to
state a few particulars.
Of the credulity and superstition which abounded during this era, and
which had been fostered by the weakness of James, a sufficient detail has
already been given in a former part of this work; and we shall here merely
add, that Alchemistry was one of the foolish pursuits of the day. Scot, who
has devoted the fourteenth book of his treatise on the "Discoverie of
Witchcraft," to this subject, tells us that the admirable description given by
Chaucer of this folly, in his Chanones Yemannes prologue and tale, still
strictly applied to its cultivators in 1584, who continued to

—————————— "looke ill-favouredlie,
And were alwaies tired beggarlie,
So as by smelling and thredbare araie,
These folke are knowne and discerned alwaie."[155:A]

An insatiable curiosity for seeing strange sights, and hearing strange
adventures, together with an eager desire for visiting foreign countries,
prevailed in an extraordinary degree during the age of Shakspeare, who has,
in several parts of his works, satirized these propensities with much
humour. In the Tempest, for instance, he has held up to scorn the first of
these foibles in an admirable strain of sarcasm:—"A strange fish! Were I in
England now, (as once I was,) and had but this fish painted, not a holiday
fool there but would give a piece of silver; there would this monster make a
man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to
relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian[155:B];" a
passage which Mr. Douce has very appositely illustrated by a quotation
from Batman. "Of late years," says the Gothic Pliny, "there hath been
brought into England, the cases or skinnes of such crocodiles to be seene,
and much money given for the sight thereof; the policy of strangers laugh at
our folly, either that we are too wealthy, or else that we know not how to
bestow our money."[155:C]
Of the influence arising from the relation of strange adventures, we have
a striking proof in the character of Othello, who won the affections of his
mistress by the detail of his "hair-breadth scapes:"—

"Wherein of antres vast, and desarts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose head touch heaven
It was 'his' hint to speak."[155:D]

It appears, indeed, that the conversation of this period very frequently
turned upon the wonderful discoveries of travellers, whose voyages to, and
travels in the New World then occupied much of the public attention.
Exaggeration, from a love of importance, too often accompanied these
narratives, a licence which our poet has happily ridiculed in the following
lines:—

—————————————— "When we were boys,
Who would believe that there were mountaineers
Dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at them
Wallets of flesh? or that there were such men,
Whose heads stood in their breasts? which now we find
Each putter-out on five for one, will bring us
Good warrant of."[156:A]

The close of this passage alludes to a practice then common among the
numerous travellers of those times, of putting out their money, especially
when about to undertake a long and hazardous journey, for the purpose of
receiving exorbitant interest on their return; a custom which, Moryson
informs us, originated among the nobility, but before 1617 had become
frequent even with men of base condition.[156:B] Thus we find Ben Jonson,
in 1599, representing Puntarvolo, in Every Man out of his Humour,
disclosing such a scheme:—"I do intend," says he, "this year of jubilee
coming on, to travel: and, because I will not altogether go upon expence, I
am determined to put forth some five thousand pound, to be paid me five for
one, upon the return of myself, my wife, and my dog from the Turk's court
in Constantinople. If all or either of us miscarry in the journey, 'tis gone: if
we be successful, why there will be five and twenty thousand pound to
entertain time withal."[156:C]
To such a height had this passion for travelling attained, that those who
were not able to accomplish a distant expedition, crossed over to France or
Italy, and gave themselves as many airs on their return, as if they had been
to the antipodes; a species of affectation which Shakspeare acutely satirizes
in the following terms:—"Farewell, monsieur traveller; look, you lisp, and
wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of
love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that

countenance you are; or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola."
[157:A]

An equally severe castigation has been bestowed on these superficial
ramblers, in Observations and Discourses, published by Edward Blount, in
1620, who informs us, that their discourse made them every where
ridiculous. "The name of English gelding," he adds, "frights them; and
thence they take occasion to fall into the commendation of a mule, or an
ass. A pasty of venison makes them sweat, and then swear that the only
delicacies be mushrooms, or caveare, or snails. A toast in beer or ale drives
them into madness; and so to declaim against the absurd and ignorant
customs of their own country, and thereupon digress into the commendation
of drinking their wine refreshed with ice or snow."
The pernicious habit of gaming had become almost universal in the days
of Elizabeth, and, if we may credit George Whetstone, had reached a
prodigious degree of excess. Speaking of the licentiousness of the stage
previous to the appearance of Shakspeare, he adds,—"But there are in the
bowels of this famous citie, farre more daungerous plays, and little
reprehended: that wicked playes of the dice, first invented by the devill, (as
Cornelius Agrippa wryteth,) and frequented by unhappy men: the detestable
roote, upon which a thousand villanies grow.
"The nurses of thease (worse than heathenysh) hellish exercises are
places called ordinary tables: of which there are in London, more in
nomber to honour the devyll, than churches to serve the living God.
"I cõstantly determine to crosse the streets, where these vile houses
(ordinaries) are planted, to blesse me from the inticements of them, which
in very deed are many, and the more dangerous in that they please with a
vain hope of gain. Insomuch on a time, I heard a distemperate dicer
solemnly sweare that he faithfully beleeved, that dice were first made of the
bones of a witch, and cards of her skin, in which there hath ever sithence

remained an inchantment yt whosoever once taketh delight in either, he
shall never have power utterly to leave them, for quoth he, I a hundred
times vowed to leave both, yet have not the grace to forsake either."[158:A]
No opportunity for the practice of this ruinous habit seems to have been
omitted, and we find the modern mode of gambling, by taking the odds, to
have been fully established towards the latter end of the sixteenth century;
for Gilbert Talbot, writing to his father, the Earl of Shrewsbury, on May the
15th, 1579, after informing His Lordship, that the matter of the Queen's
marriage with Monsieur "is growne very colde," subjoins, "and yet I know a
man may take a thousande pounds, in this towne, to be bounde to pay doble
so muche when Monsr. cum̃ ethe into Inglande, and treble so muche when
he marryethe the Q. Matie., and if he nether doe the one nor the other, to
gayne the thousande poundes cleare."[158:B]
Duelling, at this period, from its frequency, had given rise to a
complicated system of rules for its regulation, and to fixed schools for its
practice and improvement. The "Noble Science of Defence," as it was
called, included three degrees, a Master's, a Provost's, and a Scholar's, and
for each of these a regular prize was played. In order, also, to obviate
disputes, "four Ancient Masters of Defence" were constituted, who resided
"in the city of London," and to whom not only difficult points of honour
were referred, but tribute was likewise paid by all inferior professors of the
science.
Nor were books wanting to explain, and to adjust, the causes, and the
modes of quarrelling. Of these the two most celebrated were written by
Saviolo and Caranza, authors who are repeatedly mentioned by Shakspeare,
Jonson, and Fletcher. The absurd minuteness of Saviolo's treatise, entitled,
Of Honour and honourable Quarrels, 4to. 1595, has been ridiculed with
exquisite humour in As You Like It, where Touchstone says

"O sir, we quarrel in print, by the book;—we met, and found
the quarrel was upon the seventh cause.
Jaq. How did you find the quarrel on the seventh cause?
Touch. Upon a lie seven times removed;—as thus: I did
dislike the cut of a certain courtier's beard; he sent me word, if I
said his beard was not cut well, he was in the mind it was: This
is called the Retort courteous. If I sent him word again, it was
not well cut, he would send me word, he cut it to please himself:
This is called the Quip modest. If again, it was not well cut, he
disabled my judgment: This is call'd the Reply churlish. If again,
it was not well cut, he would answer, I spake not true: This is
call'd the Reproof valiant. If again, it was not well cut, he would
say, I lie: This is called the Countercheck quarrelsome: and so to
the Lie circumstantial, and the Lie direct.—All these you may
avoid, but the lie direct; and you may avoid that too, with an If. I
knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel; but when
the parties were met themselves, one of them thought but of an
If, as, If you said so, then I said so; and they shook hands, and
swore brothers. Your If is the only peace-maker; much virtue in
If."[159:A]
Nor is this much exaggerated; for Saviolo has a chapter on the Diversity
of Lies, and enumerates the Lie certain, the conditional Lie, the Lie in
general, the Lie in particular, the foolish Lie, and the returning back of the
Lie.
A taste for gossipping, as well amongst the male as female sex, was
more than usually prevalent at this epoch. An anonymous writer of 1620,
speaking of male gossips, describes their trifling and vexatiously intrusive
manners, in a way which leads us to conclude, that the evil was severely
felt, and of great magnitude:—"It is a wonder," says he, "to see what

multitudes there be of all sorts that make this their only business, and in a
manner spend their whole time in compliment; as if they were born to no
other end, bred to no other purpose, had nothing else to do, than to be a kind
of living walking ghosts, to haunt and persecute others with unnecessary
observation.—
"If these giddy goers be forced to give a reason for their wheeling up and
down the streets, their answer is, they know not else how to pass their time.
And how tedious it is, for a man that accounts his hours, to be subject to
these vacancies, and apply himself to lose a day with such time-passers;
who neither come for business, nor out of true friendship, but only to spend
the day; as if one had nothing else to do, but to supply their idle time!—
"After they have asked you how you do, and told some old or fabulous
news, laughed twice or thrice in your face, and censured those they know
you love not (when, peradventure, the next place they go to, is to them—
where they will be as courteous to you); spoke a few words of fashions and
alterations;—made legs and postures of the last edition; with three or four
diminutive oaths and protestations of their service and observance; they
then retire."
The diminutive oaths, mentioned at the close of this quotation, were,
unfortunately, considered as ornaments of conversation, and adopted by
both sexes, in order to give spirit and vivacity to their language; a shocking
practice, which seems to have been rendered fashionable by the very
reprehensible habit of the Queen, whose oaths were neither diminutive nor
rare; for it is said, that she never spared an oath in public speech or private
conversation when she thought it added energy to either. After this example
in the highest classes, we need not be surprised when Stubbes tells us,
speaking of the great body of the people, that, "if they speake but three or
four words, yet they must be interlaced with a bloudie oath or two."

These abominable expletives appear to have formed no small share of
the language of compliment, a species of simulation which was carried to an
extraordinary height in the days of our poet: thus Marston, describing the
finished gallant, says,—

———————— "Marke nothing but his clothes,
His new stampt complement, his cannon oathes;
Marke those."[160:A]

Decker, apostrophising the courtiers of his day, and playing upon a term
of Guido's musical scale, exclaims,—"You courtiers, that do nothing but
sing the gamut A-Re of complimental courtesy[161:A];" and Shakspeare,
painting this

———— "sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth."

represents the Bastard in his King John, thus addressing a travelled fop:—

—————————————— "My dear sir,
(Thus leaning on mine elbow, I begin,)
I shall beseech you—That is question now;
And then comes answer like an A B C book:—
O sir, says answer, at your best command;
At your employment; at your service, sir:—
No, sir, says question, I, sweet sir, at yours:
And so, ere answer knows what question would,
(Saving in dialogue of compliment;
And talking of the Alps, and Appennines,
The Pyrenean, and the river Po,)
It draws toward supper."[161:B]

"What a deal of synamon and ginger is sacrificed to dissimulation,"
observes Sir William Cornwallis in 1601, "O, how blessed do I take mine
eyes for presenting me with this sight! O Signior, the star that governs my
life is contentment, give me leave to interre myself in your arms!—Not so,
sir, it is too unworthy an inclosure to contain such preciousness, &c. This,
and a cup of drink, makes the time as fit for a departure as can be."[161:C]
A peculiar species of compliment existed among the scientific and
literary characters of our author's times, in permitting those who looked up
to them with reverence and esteem, to address them by the endearing
appellation of Father; adopting them, in fact, as their literary offspring, and
designating them, in their works, by the title of sons. In conformity with
this custom, Ben Jonson adopted not less than twelve or fourteen persons
for his sons, among whom were, Cartright, Randolph, Brome, &c.; and the
practice continued to be observed until the end of the seventeenth century;
for in 1676, Charles Cotton dedicated his Complete Angler to his "most
worthy father and friend, Mr. Izaak Walton, the elder;" and says in the body
of his work, "he gives me leave to call him Father, and I hope is not yet
ashamed of his Adopted Son."[162:A]
This complimental paternity Shakspeare has introduced in his Troilus
and Cressida, where Ajax, addressing Nestor, says,—"Shall I call you
father?" to which the venerable Grecian replies, "Ay, my good son."[162:B]
To this sketch of manners, we shall add a brief account of some customs,
which more peculiarly belong to the province of Police, commencing with
the inaugural ceremonies attendant on the Lord Mayor's entrance on the
duties of his office. The pageantry and magnificence which once
accompanied this periodical assumption of power, may be estimated from
the following description, taken from a manuscript, written in 1575:—
"The day of St. Simon and Jude he (the Mayor) entrethe into his estate
and offyce: and the next daie following he goeth by water to Westmynster,

in most tryumplyke maner. His barge beinge garnished with the armes of
the citie: and nere the sayd barge goeth a shyppbote of the Queenes Matie,
beinge trymed upp, and rigged lyke a shippe of warre, with dyvers peces of
ordinance, standards, penons, and targetts of the proper armes of the sayd
Mayor, the armes of the Citie, of his company; and of the marchaunts
adventurers, or of the staple, or of the company of the newe trades; next
before hym goeth the barge of the lyvery of his owne company, decked with
their owne proper armes, then the bachelers barge, and so all the companies
in London, in order, every one havinge their owne proper barge garnished
with the armes of their company. And so passinge alonge the Thamise,
landeth at Westmynster, where he taketh his othe in Thexcheker, beffore the
judge there, (whiche is one of the chiefe judges of England,) whiche done,
he returneth by water as afforsayd, and landeth at powles wharfe, where he
and the reste of the Aldermen take their horses, and in great pompe passe
through the greate streete of the citie, called Cheapside. And fyrste of all
cometh ij great estandarts, one havinge the armes of the citie, and the other
the armes of the Mayor's company; next them ij drommes and a flute, then
an ensigne of the citie, and then about lxx or lxxx poore men marchinge ij
and two togeather in blewe gownes, with redd sleeves and capps, every one
bearinge a pyke and a target, wheron is paynted the armes of all them that
have byn Mayor of the same company that this newe mayor is of. Then ij
banners one of the kynges armes, the other of the Mayor's owne proper
armes. Then a sett of hautboits playinge, and after them certayne wyfflers,
in velvett cotes, and chaynes of golde, with white staves in their handes,
then the pageant of tryumphe rychly decked, whereuppon by certayne
fygures and wrytinges, some matter touchinge justice, and the office of a
maiestrate is represented. Then xvj trompeters viij and viij in a company,
havinge banners of the Mayor's company. Then certayne wyfflers in velvet
cotes and chaynes, with white staves as aforesayde. Then the bachelers ij,
and two together, in longe gownen, with crymson hoodes on their shoulders

of sattyn; which bachelers are chosen every yeare of the same company that
the Mayor is of, (but not of the lyvery,) and serve as gentlemen on that and
other festivall daies, to wayte on the Mayor, beinge in nomber accordinge to
the quantetie of the company, sometimes sixty or one hundred. After them
xij trompeters more, with banners of the Mayor's company, then the
dromme and flute of the citie, and an ensigne of the Mayor's company, and
after, the waytes of the citie in blewe gownes, redd sleeves and cappes,
every one havinge his silver coller about his neck. Then they of the liverey
in their longe gownes, every one havinge his hood on his lefte shoulder,
halfe black and halfe redd, the nomber of them is accordinge to the greatnes
of the companye whereof they are. After them followe Sheriffes officers,
and then the Mayor's officers, with other officers of the citie, as the comon
sargent, and the chamberlayne; next before the Mayore goeth the sword-
bearer, having on his headd, the cappe of honor, and the sworde of the citie
in his right hande, in a riche skabarde, sett with pearle, and on his left hand
goeth the comon cryer of the citie, with his great mace on his shoulder, all
gilt. The Mayor hathe on a long gowne of skarlet, and on his lefte shoulder,
a hood of black velvet, and a riche coller of gold of SS. about his neck, and
with him rydeth the olde Mayor also, in his skarlet gowne, hood of velvet,
and a chayne of golde about his neck. Then all the Aldermen ij and ij
together, (amongst whom is the Recorder), all in skarlet gownes; and those
that have byn Mayors, have chaynes of gold, the other have black velvett
tippetts. The ij Shereffes come last of all, in their black skarlet gownes and
chaynes of golde.
"In this order they passe alonge through the citie, to the Guyldhall,
where they dyne that daie, to the number of 1000 persons, all at the charge
of the Mayor and the ij Shereffes. This feast costeth 400l., whereof the
Mayor payeth 200l., and eche of the Shereffes 100l. Imediately after dyner,
they go the churche of St. Paule, every one of the aforesaid poore men,

bearrynge staffe torches and targetts, whiche torches are lighted when it is
late, before they come from evenynge prayer."[164:A]
Had the police of the city been as strictly regulated, as were the
ceremonies attending the inauguration of its chief magistrate, the
inhabitants of London, in Queen Elizabeth's days, would have had little
cause of complaint, with regard to personal protection; but, though the
Statutes of the Streets were numerous and rigid, and sometimes ridiculously
minute, for No. 22. enacts, that "no man shall blowe any horne in the night,
within this citie, or whistle after the houre of nyne of the clock in the night,
under paine of imprisonment[165:A]," yet they were so ill executed, that,
even in the day-time, disturbances of the most atrocious kind were deemed
matters of common occurrence. Thus Gilbert Talbot and his wife, writing to
the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury, consider the following acts of
violence as trifling matters:—"On Thursday laste, (Feb. 13th, 1587,) as my
Lorde Rytche was rydynge in the streates, there was one Wyndam that stode
in a dore, and shotte a dagge at him, thynkynge to have slayne him; but God
p˜vyded so for my L. Rytche, that this Wyndam apoyntynge his servante yt
mornynge to charge his dagge wth II bulletts, the fellow, doubtinge he mente
to doe sum myschefe wth it, charged it only wth powder and paper, and no
bullett; and so this L'. lyfe was thereby saved, for otherwyse he had beene
slayne. Wyndam was p˜sently taken by my L. Rytche's men, and, beynge
broughte before the Counsell, confessed his intende, but the cause of his
quarrell I knowe not; but he is com̄ ytted to the Towre. The same daye, also,
as Sr John Conway was goynge in the streetes, Mr Lodovyke Grevell came
sodenly uppon him, and stroke him on the hedd wth a sworde, and but for
one of Sr John Conwaye's men, who warded the blow, he had cutt of his
legges; yet did he hurte him sumwhat on bothe his shynns: The Councell
sente for Lodovyke Grevell, and have com̄ ytted him to the Marchallcye. I
am forced to trouble yor Honors wth thes tryflynge matters, for I know no
greater."[165:B]

Yet a sufficient number of watchmen, constables, and justices of the
peace, was not wanting. Of these, the first were armed with halberds,
which, in Shakspeare's time, were called bills, and they usually carried a
lanthorn in one hand, and sometimes a bell in the other, resting the halberd
on the shoulder.[166:A] Notwithstanding these official characters, however,
the peace of the city was frequently more effectually preserved by the
interference of the apprentices, than by that of the appointed guardians of
public order; for it appears, from Shakspeare's dramas, that the cry of
Clubs! was a signal for the apprentices to arm themselves with these
weapons, and quell the disturbance. Thus in King Henry the Eighth, act v.
sc. 3., the Porter's man says:—"I hit that woman who cried out, clubs! when
I might see from far some forty truncheoneers draw to her succour, which
were the hope of the Strand[166:B];" and in Henry the Sixth, Part the First,
even the Mayor of London is represented, on occasion of a quarrel between
the partizans of the Duke of Gloucester and the Cardinal of Winchester, as
threatening to call in similar assistance:—

"I'll call for clubs, if you will not away."[166:C]

We cannot wonder that the inferior officers of the Police should be slack
in the performance of their duty, when we recollect, that the Justices of the
Peace, in these days, especially those resident in the metropolis, were so
open to bribery, that many of them obtained the appellation of Basket
Justices; nor did a member of the House of Commons hesitate, during the
reign of Elizabeth, to describe a justice of the peace as "an animal who for
half a dozen of chickens would readily dispense with a dozen penal laws."
[166:D]

Many customs of a miscellaneous nature might with ease be extracted
from the dramas of our poet; but to give them any relative bearing or
concatenation would be nearly impossible, and a totally insulated detail of

minute circumstances, would prove tedious to the most persevering reader.
Enough, we trust, has been collected to throw no feeble light on the general
manners and modes of living, of the period under consideration, especially
if it be recollected that the full picture is to be formed from a combination
of this with the similar chapter, in a former part of the work, on the costume
of rural life.

FOOTNOTES:
[89:A] Holinshed, vol. i. p. 289, 290.—Harrison's Description of England.

[90:A] Paul Hentzner's Travels in England: translated by Lord Orford.
Edward Jeffery's edit. 8vo. 1797. p. 34, 35.

[91:A] Nugæ Antiquæ apud Park, vol. i. p. 361.

[91:B] Ibid. p. 170.

[91:C] Ibid. p. 118.

[92:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 526, 527. note 2.

[92:B] Ibid. vol. vi. p. 63. Much Ado About Nothing, act ii. sc. 3.

[93:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 314. Act iii. sc. 2.

[93:B] Ibid. vol. iv. p. 289. Act iv. sc. 4.

[93:C] "The English Ape, The Italian Imitation, The Foote-Steppes of
Fraunce," a black-letter tract, dated 1588; for an account of which see Beloe's
Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 260.

[93:D] Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 64. note by Malone.

[94:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 128.

[94:B] "Christ's Tears over Jerusalem," 4to. 1594.

[94:C] "Quippes for upstart new fangled Gentlewemen: or a Glasse, to view
the pride of vain glorious Women," 4to. 1595.—Vide Restituta, vol. iii. p. 255.

[94:D] Vide Strutt's Customs, vol. iii. plate 22. fig. 9.

[94:E] Restituta, vol. iii. p. 256.

[95:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 154.

[95:B] Strutt's Customs, vol. iii. plate 12.

[95:C] Restituta, vol. iii. p. 256.

[95:D] Anatomie of Abuses, 4to. p. 59.

[95:E] Restituta, vol. iii. p. 257.

[97:A] Anatomie of Abuses, 4to. p. 43.

[97:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 248.

[97:C] See Katharine's Gown, in Taming of the Shrew, Reed's Shakspeare,
vol. ix. p. 157.

[98:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 144.—Mr. Douce has given a plate of
the chopine, in his second volume on Shakspeare, p. 234.

[98:B] Restituta, vol. iii. p. 257.

[99:A] "In a list of jewels given to the Queen at New-years tide, 1589, is 'A
fanne of fethers, white and redd, the handle of golde, inamaled with a halfe
moone of mother of perles, within that a halfe moone garnished with sparks of
dyamonds, and a few seede perles on the one side, having her Majestie's picture
within it; and on the back-side a device with a crowe over it. Geven by Sir
Frauncis Drake.'"—Nichols's Progresses, vol. ii. p. 54. note.

[99:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 80.; vol. xi. p. 261. &c. &c.

[99:C] Ibid. vol. xv. p. 46. Act i. sc. 3.

[99:D] Ibid. vol. ix. p. 349. 352. Winter's Tale, act iv. sc. 3.

[99:E] Stowe's Annals, by Howes, edit 1614. p. 868.

[99:F] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 72. note.

[100:A] Anatomy of Melancholy, folio, 8th edit. p. 293, 294. 307.—In
Vaughan's "Golden Grove," also, the first edition of which appeared in 1600,
may be found some curious notices on "superfluitie of apparell" with regard to
both sexes; he tells us that the women in the early ages of the world "imitated not
hermaphrodites, in wearing of men's doublets. They wore no chaines of gold,
&c.—they went not clothed in velvet gownes, nor in chamlet peticotes. They
smelt not unto pomander, civet, muske, and such lyke trumperies."

[101:A] The Court and Character of King James. Written and taken by Sir A.
W. being an eye, and ear witnesse. 12mo. 1650. p. 180, 181.

[101:B] Nugæ Antiquæ, vol. i. pp. 391, 392.

[102:A] Decker's Gull's Hornbook, reprint of 1812, pp. 83. 87.

[102:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 175.

[102:C] Ibid. vol. xvii. p. 467.—Caps were usually worn by the lower class,
see vol. vi. p. 89.

[102:D] Ibid. vol. vi. p. 357.

[102:E] Bottom, in Midsummer Night's Dream, mentions also a straw-
coloured, an orange-tawny, a purple-in-grain, and a perfect yellow, beard, act i.
sc. 2.

[102:F] See Jaques's description of the Seven Ages in As You Like It, act ii. sc.
7.

[103:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 399.

[103:B] Jervis Markham has an allusion to this custom in his Treatise entitled
Honour in Perfection, 4to., p. 18.

[103:C] Frequent references to these fashions may be found in our author;
vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 162; vol. ix. p. 242, and vol. x. p. 355. Jonson
and Fletcher also abound with them; and see that curious exposition of
fashionable follies, Decker's Gull's Hornbook, Reprint, p. 86. 137, &c.

[103:D] Vide Stowe's Annals, p. 869.—The divisions, or pieces of the brim of
the collar or ruffe, were, according to Cotgrave's Dictionary, 1611, termed
piccadillies. And the author of London and its Environs described, tells us, that
in Piccadilly "there were formerly no houses, and only one shop for Spanish
ruffs, which was called the Piccadilly or ruff shop." Vide vol. v.

[104:A] Strutt's Customs, vol. iii. p. 85.—The next age saw this absurd mode
of dress revived: and Bulmer, in his Pedigree of the English Gallant, relates, that,

when the law was in force against the use of bags for stuffing breeches, a man
was brought before a court of justice, charged with wearing the prohibited
article, upon which, in order to refute the accusation, he produced from within "a
pair of sheets, two table cloths, ten napkins, four shirts, a brush, a glass, a comb,
night-caps, &c." p. 548.

[104:B] In the first volume of the Antiquarian Repertory, it is recorded, that
"Nailer came through London apparelled in a doublet and galey-gascoigne
breeches, all of crimsin satin, cut and raced."

[104:C]

Luc. A round hose, madam, now's not worth a pin,
Unless you have a cod-piece to stick pins on.

Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 236.

Thomas Wright in his "Passions of the Minde," first published in 1601,
speaking of our countrymen's proneness to imitate French fashions, tells us in his
chapter entitled "Discoverie of Passions in Apparell,"—"Some I have heard very
contemptuously say, that scarcely a new forme of breeches appeared in the
French King's kitchin but they were presently translated over into the court of
England."

[105:A] Bishop's Blossoms.—Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 197.

[105:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 197.

[105:C] Anatomy of Abuses, p. 30.

[105:D] Gull's Hornbook, p. 93.

[105:E] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xi. p. 275, note.

[106:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 212.

[106:B] Quoted by Dr. Farmer: Reed's Shakspeare, vol. x. p. 481.

[106:C] Decker's Gull's Horn-book, reprint, pp. 13. 76.

[107:A] See also, Strutt's Dress and Habits of the People of England, vol. ii.
p. 263.

[107:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 102. Act ii. sc. 4.

[107:C] Vide Andrews's History of Great Britain, vol. ii. p. 301.

[107:D] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx. p. 256.

[107:E] "The Longer thou Livest the more Fool thou art."—Vide Biographia
Dramatica, vol. ii. p. 193.

[108:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. pp. 75, 76.—To the old two-handed sword,
and to the monstrous stuffed hose, Ben Jonson most humorously refers us, in his
Epicœne; or, the Silent Woman, where True-wit frightens Daw by an exaggerated
description of Sir Amorous La Foole's warlike attire. "He has got," says he,
"somebody's old two-hand sword, to mow you off at the knees: and that sword
hath spawn'd such a dagger!—But then he is so hung with pikes, halberds,
petronels, callivers, and muskets, that he looks like a justice of peace's hall: a
man of two thousand a year is not cess'd at so many weapons as he has on. There
was never fencer challeng'd at so many several foils. You would think he meant
to murder all St. Pulchre's parish. If he could but victual himself for half a year in
his breeches, he is sufficiently arm'd to overrun a country."—Act iv. sc. 5.

[108:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 257. Act ii. sc. 1.

[109:A] Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 315.

[109:B] Stowe's Annals, p. 869.

[109:C] Lodge's Illustrations of British History, vol. ii. p. 228.

[110:A] Anatomy of Melancholy, 8th edit. folio, p. 295.

[111:A] "Doctor Merrie-man: or Nothing but Mirth. Written by S. R. At
London, printed for John Deane, and are to be sold at his Shoppe at Temple
Barre, under the Gate." 1609. 4to. pp. 24.—Vide Restituta, vol. iii. p. 442.
Samuel Rowland is supposed to be the author of this lively satire.

[112:A] Nugæ Antiquæ, vol. i. pp. 201, 202.

[113:A] Travels in England, pp. 54. 56-58.

[113:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. pp. 489-491.

[113:C] Censura Literaria, vol. viii. p. 19.

[114:A] "The Touchstone of Complexions, &c." First written in Latine by
Levine Lemnie, and now Englished by Thomas Newton. small 8vo. bl. l. 1576.

[114:B] Merry Wives of Windsor, act iii. sc. 3.

[114:C] Much Ado about Nothing, act i. sc. 3.

[114:D] King John, act iv. sc. 1.

[114:E] Henry IV. Part I., act ii. sc. 4.

[114:F] Hamlet, act iii. sc. 3.

[115:A] Malone's Supplement, vol. i. p. 487.

[115:B] "A Dialogue both pleasaunt and pitifull, &c." by Dr. Willyam
Bulleyne, 1564. sig. H 5. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 104.

[115:C] "No whipping nor tripping, but a kind of friendly snipping," 8vo.—
Vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 104. note by Malone.

[115:D] Act iii. sc. 2.

[115:E] Cymbeline, act ii. sc. 2.

[115:F] "A Specimen of a Commentary on Shakspeare, &c." on the principle
of Mr. Locke's Doctrine of the Association of Ideas, p. 78. 8vo. 1794.

[116:A] Pope's Odyssey, book vii.

[116:B] Good's Lucretius, vol. i. p. 189.

[116:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 447. King Henry V., act iv. sc. 2.

[116:D] Romeo and Juliet, act i. sc. 4.

[116:E] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xv. p. 55.

[117:A] Vide Warton's Extract from Froissart, Hist. of English Poetry, vol. iii.
Dissertation, p. lxxvi.

[117:B] Ancient British Drama, vol. ii. p. 592.

[117:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 181.

[117:D] Gull's Horn-book, pp. 22, 23.

[117:E] "More Dissemblers besides Women," act i. sc. 1.

[118:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 92. Taming of the Shrew, act ii. sc. 1.

[118:B] Ibid. p. 93. note by Steevens.

[118:C] Ibid. vol. v. p. 376. note.

[118:D] Act iii. sc. 4.

[118:E] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx. p. 65.

[118:F] Ibid. vol. ix. p. 124.

[119:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 272. Act i. sc. 5.

[119:B] Ibid. vol. xv. p. 342. Act iii. sc. 2.

[119:C] Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 85.

[119:D] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xi. p. 331. King Henry IV. Part I. act iii. sc. 1.

[119:E] Cymbeline, act ii. sc. 2. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 466.

[120:A] Act i. sc. 4. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xviii. p. 48.

[120:B] Act ii. sc. 5.

[120:C] Bulwarke of Defence, 1579, fol. 21.

[120:D] Belman of London, 1612. sig. B 4.—We may add, also, to this
enumeration, the general use of large mirrors, or looking-glasses, for Hentzner
tells us that he was shewn, "at the house of Leonard Smith, a taylor, a most
perfect looking-glass, ornamented with gold, pearls, silver, and velvet, so richly
as to be estimated at 500 ecus du soleil."—Travels, p. 32.

[122:A] Holinshed, vol. i. p. 280.

[123:A] Hentzner's Travels, pp. 36, 37.

[125:A] Nugæ Antiquæ, vol. i. pp. 349-352.

[125:B] Ibid. p. 106.

[125:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 236. Act ii. sc. 1.

[126:A] Douce's Illustrations, vol. i. p. 125.

[126:B] Whalley's Jonson; act iii. sc. 2.

[126:C] "Coryat's Crudities, hastily gobled up in five Moneths Travells, &c."
1611. 4to. p. 90.

[126:D] Whalley's Johnson; act v. sc. 4.

[127:A] "The benefit of the auncient Bathes of Buckstones, which cureth
most greevous sicknesses, never before published: compiled by John Jones,
Phisition. At the King's Mede nigh Darby. Anno salutis 1572, &c." bl. l.—Vide
Censura Literaria, vol. x. p. 277.

[127:B] Vide Stubbes's Anatomie of Abuses, p. 69, and Caius's Booke of
Counseil, &c. fol. 24.

[127:C] The Passions of the Minde. By Th. W. (Thomas Wright.) London,
printed by V. S. for W. B. 1601. small 8vo.

[128:A] The Works of Francis Osborn, Esq. 8vo. 9th edit. p. 475.

[128:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. p. 335.

[129:A] Delicate Dyet for Daintie-mouthed Droonkards: wherein the fowle
abuse of common carowsing and quaffing with heartie draughtes is honestly
admonished. 8vo. 1576.

[129:B] Philocothonista, or the drunkard opened, dissected, and anatomized,
4to.

[129:C] Lodge's Illustrations of British History, &c., vol. ii. p. 27.

[130:A] Gull's Horn-book, 1609, reprint, p. 119, 120.

[130:B] English Villanies, &c. first printed in 1616.

[130:C] Of the precise year when the first edition of Markham's English
House-wife was published, I am ignorant; but a near approximation to the fact
may be deduced from the following statement:—The first edition of his Country
Contentments appeared in 1615, and the eleventh in 1683; of his Cheap and
Good Husbandry, the first impression took place in 1616, and the fourteenth in
1683; and of the English House-wife, the ninth edition issued from the press in
the same year, namely 1683.

[131:A] English Housewife, p. 112, 113.

[131:B] Ibid. p. 118.

[131:C] "If sack and sugar be a fault, god help the wicked."—Reed's
Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 308.

[132:A] Itinerary, 1617, Part III. p. 152.

[132:B] Travels, Jeffery's edition, p. 64.: "They put a great deal of sugar in
their drink."

[132:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 282.

[132:D] "Go fetch me a quart of sack, put a toast in it," Merry Wives of
Windsor, act iii. sc. 5.

[132:E] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 150.

[132:F] Ibid. vol. xi. p. 281, 282.—It appears that Sack, in Shakspeare's time,
was sold at eight-pence halfpenny a Quart—for in Falstaff's Tavern-bill occurs
the following item: "Sack, two gallons, 5s. 8d." Vol. xi. p. 314.

[133:A] The title-page of this curious poem is lost, but the passage alluded to,
is as follows:—

"There hath beene great sale and utterance of wine,
Besides beere and ale, and ipocras fine,

In every country, region, and nation;
Chefely at Billingsgate, at the Salutation,
And Bores Head, neere London Stone,
The Swan at Dowgate, a taverne well knowne,
The Miter in Cheape, and then the Bull Head,
And many like places that make noses red;
The Bores Head in old Fish-street, three Cranes in the Vintree,
And now of late St. Martin's in the Sentree;
The Wind-mill in Lothburry, the Ship at the Exchange,
King's Head in New Fish-streete, where roysters do range;
The Mermaid in Cornhill, Red Lion in the Strand,
Three Tuns Newgate Market, Old Fish-street at the Swan."

[133:B] "The Survay of London," 4to. 1618. bl. l. p. 782.

[134:A] Earle's Microcosmography, reprint by Bliss, pp. 39, 40.

[134:B] Gull's Horn-book, reprint by Nott, pp. 109. 127, 128.

[134:C] Ibid. p. 159, 160.

[134:D] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 91.

[134:E] Ibid. vol. v. p. 91. note. From Merry Passages and Jeasts, MSS. Harl.
6395.

[135:A] Gull's Horn-book, pp. 121, 122.—"Let us here remark," adds Dr.
Nott, in a note on this passage, "that J. Harington is to be considered as the
inventor of that cleanly comfort the water-closet; which gave rise to his witty
little tract above-mentioned, (Metamorphosis of Ajax, a jakes, 1596,) wherein he
humorously recommends the same to Q. Elizabeth; and for which, by the way, he
was banished her court."

[135:B] The Workes of the most High and Mighty Prince, James, &c. &c.
folio, 1616. p. 222.

[136:A] Apophthegms of King James, 1671.

[136:B] The Workes of King James, folio, p. 221.

[136:C] Whalley's Jonson; act iii. sc. 5.

[137:A] Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 235. col. 1.

[137:B] Workes of King James, p. 221.

[137:C] History of his Life and Times, 8vo. p. 44.

[137:D] Gull's Horn-book, pp. 119, 120.

[138:A] Reprint of Decker's Gull's Horn-book, p. 17. note 15.

[138:B] Travels, 8vo. p. 63.

[138:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 127.

[138:D] Itinerary, 1617. folio.

[140:A] Nugæ Antiquæ, vol. i. pp. 105-108.

[141:A] Wit's Miserie and the World's Madnesse, 4to. 1599.—So necessary
was a fool to the monarch and his courtiers, that Armin, in his Nest of Ninnies,
4to. 1608, describing Will Sommers, Henry the Eighth's fool, says,—

—————————————— "In all the Court
Few men were more belov'd than was this Foole,
Whose merry prate kept with the king much rule.
When he was sad, the King and he would rime:
Thus Will exiled sadnesse many a time."

[142:A] We must here observe, that the Baron of Brandwardine's Fool, in
Waverley, is an admirable copy of the character, as drawn by Shakspeare; and, as
the work seems a faithful picture of existing manners in 1745, is a striking proof
of the retention of this curious personage, until a recent period.

[142:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xx. p. 72.

[142:C] Gifford's Edition of Massinger, vol. i. p. 167.; and vol. iv. p. 29.

[143:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 133.

[143:B] Gifford's Massinger, vol. i. p. 166.; and Dodsley's Old Plays, by
Reed, vol. xii. p. 430.

[144:A] Act iv. sc. 2.

[144:B] Ancient British Drama, vol. ii. p. 546. col. 1.

[144:C] Restituta, vol. iii. p. 258.

[144:D] The Works of Taylor, the Water Poet, 1630. p. 240.

[145:A] Vide Lords' Journals, vol. ii. p. 229.

[145:B] Vide Gifford's Massinger, vol. iv. pp. 43, 44. note ex Autog. in Bibl.
Harl.

[146:A] Part II. chapter ii.

[146:B] Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 94.—Mr. Douce gives the title-
pages of several publications of this kind, in 1588, 1591, 1598, and 1599; and,
lastly, describes one called "The needles excellency," illustrated with copper-
plates, and adds,—"prefixed to the patterns are sundry poems in commendation
of the needle, and describing the characters of ladies who have been eminent for
their skill in needle-work, among which are Queen Elizabeth and the Countess of
Pembroke. These poems were composed by John Taylor, the water poet. It
appears that the work (in 1640) had gone through twelve impressions, and yet a
copy is now scarcely to be met with. This may be accounted for by supposing
that such books were generally cut to pieces, and used by women to work upon
or transfer to their samplers.—It appears to have been originally published in the
reign of James the First." P. 96.

[147:A] Vide Chalmers's Apology, p. 45., from Murden, p. 657.

[147:B] Moryson's Itinerary, p. 233.

[148:A] Walpole's Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors apud Park, vol. ii.
p. 89.

[148:B] Nugæ Antiquæ, vol. ii. pp. 216-218.

[149:A] Nichols's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. ii.

[149:B] Nugæ Antiquæ, vol. i. pp. 355. 357-359.

[150:A] The Court and Character of King James, 12mo. 1650. pp. 5, 6.

[150:B] Vide Melvill's Memoirs.

[151:A] Nugæ Antiquæ, vol. i. pp. 175, 176.

[151:B] Ibid. vol. i. p. 167.

[151:C] Ibid. p. 235.

[151:D] Ibid. p. 345.

[152:A] Ibid. vol. i. pp. 367-370.

[153:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 353.

[154:A] Lodge's Illustrations of British History, vol. i. Introduction, pp. xviii.
xix. from a MS. in the possession of the Rev. Sir Richard Kaye, Dean of Lincoln.

[154:B] Hentzner's Travels, pp. 63, 64.

[155:A] Discoverie of Witchcraft, 4to. pp. 355, 356.—Scot has taken great
liberties with the text of Chaucer, both in modernising the language, and in
tacking together widely separated lines and couplets.

[155:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 83. Act ii. sc. 2.

[155:C] Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 14.—Batman upon Bartholome,
fol. 359. b.

[155:D] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xix. pp. 269, 270.

[156:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. pp. 114, 115.

[156:B] Itinerary, Part I. p. 198.

[156:C] Whalley's Works of Ben Jonson; act ii. sc. 3.

[157:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. p. 138. As You Like It, act iv. sc. 1.

[158:A] "The Enemie to Vnthryftinesse: publishing by Lawes, documents and
disciplines, &c. By George Whetstons, Gent. Printed at London by Richard
Jones. 1586." 4to. pp. 24. 32.—Vide British Bibliographer, vol. iii. pp. 601-604.

[158:B] Lodge's Illustrations of British History, vol. ii. pp. 217, 218.

[159:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. pp. 171. 177. 179, 180, 181. 183.

[160:A] Scourge of Villanie, 1599. book ii. sat. 7.

[161:A] Gull's Horn-book, p. 15.

[161:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. x. pp. 360-362.

[161:C] Essayes by Sir William Cornwallyes, the younger. Essay 28.

[162:A] Walton's Complete Angler, Bagster's edit. 1808, pp. 369. 380.

[162:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xv. pp. 328, 329.

[164:A] "A breffe description of the Royall Citie of London, capitall citie of
this realme of England. (City Arms.) Wrytten by me William Smythe citezen and
haberdasher of London, 1575." MS.

"This compilation," says Mr. Haslewood, "forms a quarto volume of moderate
thickness, and was intended for publication."—Vide British Bibliographer, vol. i.
pp. 539-542.

[165:A] Vide "The Statutes of the Streets," printed by Wolfe, in 1595.

[165:B] Lodge's Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 206.

[166:A] The costume of the Watchman is thus represented in the title-page to
Decker's "O per se O," &c. 4to. 1612, and is copied in Reed's Shakspeare, vol.
vi. p. 97.

[166:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xv. p. 205.

[166:C] Ibid. vol. xiii. p. 36.

[166:D] D'Ewes's Journals of Parliament, in Queen Elizabeth's Reign, p. 661.
664.

CHAPTER VII.

ON THE DIVERSIONS OF THE METROPOLIS, AND THE
COURT—THE STAGE; ITS USAGES, AND ECONOMY.
Of the diversions of the metropolis and court, some were peculiar, and
some were shared in common with the country. "The countrey hath his
recreations," observes Burton, "the city his several Gymnicks and exercises,
feasts and merry meetings."—"What so pleasant as to see some Pageant or
sight go by, as at Coronations, Weddings, and such like solemnities, to see
an Embassadour or a Prince met, received, entertained, with Masks, Shews,
Fireworks, &c."[168:A]; and an old dramatic poet of 1590, gives us a still
more copious list of town amusements:—

"—— Let nothing that's magnifical,
Or that may tend to London's graceful state,
Be unperform'd, as showes and solemne feastes,
Watches in armour, triumphes, cresset lights,
Bonefires, belles, and peales of ordinaunce
And pleasure. See that plaies be published,
Mai-games and maskes, with mirth and minstrelsie,
Pageants and school-feastes, beares and puppet-plaies.[168:B]

"Every palace," continues Burton, "every city almost, hath his peculiar
walks, cloysters, terraces, groves, theatres, pageants, games, and several
recreations[168:C];" and we purpose, in this chapter, giving some account of
the leading articles thus enumerated, but more particularly of the stage, as
being peculiarly connected with the design and texture of our work.

As the principal object, therefore, of the present discussion, will be the
amusements usually appropriated to the capital; those which it has in
common with the country shall be first enumerated, though in a more
superficial way.
Of these, card-playing seems to have been as universal in the days of
Elizabeth, as in modern times, and carried on, too, with the same ruinous
consequences to property and morals; for though Stowe tells us, when
commemorating the customs of London, that "from All-Hallows eve to the
day following Candlemas-day, there was, among other sports, playing at
cards for counters, nails, and points, in every house, more for pastime than
for gain," yet we learn from contemporary satirists, from Gosson, Stubbes,
and Northbrooke[169:A], that all ranks, and especially the upper classes, were
incurably addicted to gaming in the pursuit of this amusement, which they
considered equally as seductive and pernicious as dice.
The games at cards peculiar to this period, and now obsolete, are, 1.
Primero, supposed to be the most ancient game of cards in England. It was
very fashionable in the age of Shakspeare, who represents Henry the Eighth
playing "at primero with the duke of Suffolk[169:B];" and Falstaff exclaiming
in the Merry Wives of Windsor, "I never prospered since I foreswore myself
at primero."[169:C]
The mode of playing this curious game is thus described by Mr. Strutt,
from Mr. Barrington's papers upon card-playing, in the eighth volume of the
Archæologia:—"Each player had four cards dealt to him one by one, the
seven was the highest card in point of number that he could avail himself
of, which counted for twenty-one, the six counted for sixteen, the five for
fifteen, and the ace for the same, but the two, the three, and the four, for
their respective points only. The knave of hearts was commonly fixed upon
for the quinola, which the player might make what card or suit he thought
proper; if the cards were of different suits, the highest number won the

primero, if they were all of one colour he that held them won the flush."
[170:A]

2. Trump, nearly coeval in point of antiquity with primero, and
introduced in Gammer Gurton's Needle, a comedy, first acted in 1561,
where Dame Chat, addressing Diccon, says,—

"We be fast set at trump, man, hard by the fyre;"[170:B]

and we learn from Decker that, in 1612, it was much in vogue:—"To
speake," he remarks, "of all the sleights used by card-players in all sorts of
games would but weary you that are to read, and bee but a thanklesse and
unpleasing labour for me to set them down. Omitting, therefore the deceipts
practised (even in the fayrest and most civill companies) at Primero, Saint
Maw, Trump, and such like games, I will, &c."[170:C]
3. Gleek. This game is alluded to twice by Shakspeare[170:D]; and from a
passage in Cook's Green's Tu Quoque, appears to have been held in much
esteem:—
"Scat. Come, gentlemen, what is your game?
Staines. Why, gleek; that's your only game;"[170:E]
it is then proposed to play either at twelve-penny gleek, or crown gleek.
[170:F]

To these may be added, Gresco, Mount Saint, New Cut, Knave Out of
Doors, and Ruff, all of which are mentioned in old plays, and were
favourites among our ancestors.[170:G]
Tables and Dice, enumerated by Burton after cards, include some games
unknown to the present day; such as tray-trip, mum-chance, philosopher's
game, novum, &c.; the first is noticed by Shakspeare in Twelfth Night, and
appears, from a note by Mr. Tyrwhitt, to have been a species of

draughts[171:A]; the second was also a game at tables, and is coupled by Ben
Jonson in the Alchemist with tray-trip[171:B]; the third is mentioned by
Burton[171:C], and is described by Mr. Strutt from a manuscript in the British
Museum.—"It is called," says the author, "'a number fight,' because in it
men fight and strive together by the art of counting or numbering how one
may take his adversary's king and erect a triumph upon the deficiency of his
calculations[171:D];" and the fourth is introduced by Shakspeare in Love's
Labour's Lost[171:E];—"it was properly called novum quinque," remarks Mr.
Douce, "from the two principal throws of the dice, nine and five;—was
called in French quinque-nove, and is said to have been invented in
Flanders."[171:F]
The immoralities to which dice have given birth, we are authorised in
considering, from the proverbial phraseology of Shakspeare, to have been
as numerous in his time as at present. The expressions "false as dice[171:G],"
and "false as dicers' oaths[171:H]," will be illustrated by the following
anecdote, taken from an anonymous MS. of the reign of James the First:
—"Sir William Herbert, playing at dice with another gentleman, there rose
some questions about a cast. Sir William's antagonist declared it was a four
and a five; he as positively insisted that it was a five and a six; the other
then swore with a bitter imprecation, that it was as he had said; Sir William
then replied, 'Thou art a perjured knave; for give me a sixpence, and if there
be a four upon the dice, I will return you a thousand pounds;' at which the
other was presently abashed, for indeed the dice were false, and of a high
cut, without a four."[172:A]
Dancing was an almost daily amusement in the court of Elizabeth; the
Queen was peculiarly fond of this exercise, as had been her father Henry
the Eighth, and the taste for it became so general, during her reign, that a
great part of the leisure of almost every class of society was spent, and
especially on days of festivity, in dancing.

To dance elegantly was one of the strongest recommendations to the
favour of Her Majesty; and her courtiers, therefore, strove to rival each
other in this pleasing accomplishment; nor were their efforts, in many
instances, unrewarded. Sir Christopher Hatton, we are told, owed his
promotion, in a great measure, to his skill in dancing; and in accordance
with this anecdote, Gray opens his "Long Story" with an admirable
description of his merit in this department, which, as containing a most just
and excellent picture, both of the architecture and manners of "the days of
good Queen Bess," as well as of the dress and agility of the knight, we with
pleasure transcribe. Stoke-Pogeis, the scene of the narrative, was formerly
in the possession of the Hattons:—

"In Britain's isle, no matter where,
An ancient pile of building stands;
The Huntingdons and Hattons there
Employ'd the pow'r of Fairy hands

To raise the cieling's fretted height,
Each pannel in achievements clothing,
Rich windows that exclude the light,
And passages that lead to nothing.

Full oft within the spacious walls,
When he had fifty winters o'er him,
My grave Lord-Keeper led the brawls;
The seal and maces danc'd before him.

His bushy beard and shoe-strings green,
His high-crown'd hat and sattin doublet,
Mov'd the stout heart of England's Queen.
Tho' Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it."

The Brawl, a species of dance, here alluded to, is derived from the
French word braule, "indicating," observes Mr. Douce, "a shaking or
swinging motion.—It was performed by several persons uniting hands in a
circle, and giving each other continual shakes, the steps changing with the
tune. It usually consisted of three pas and a pied-joint, to the time of four
strokes of the bow; which, being repeated, was termed a double brawl. With
this dance, balls were usually opened."[173:A]
Shakspeare seems to have entertained as high an idea of the efficacy of a
French brawl, as probably did Sir Christopher Hatton, when he exhibited
before Queen Elizabeth; for he makes Moth in Love's Labour's Lost ask
Armado,—"Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?" and he
then exclaims, "These betray nice wenches."[173:B] That several dances were
included under the term brawls, appears from a passage in Shelton's Don
Quixote:—"After this there came in another artificial dance, of those called
Brawles[173:C];" and Mr. Douce informs us, that amidst a great variety of
brawls, noticed in Thoinot Arbeau's treatise in dancing, entitled
Orchesographie, occurs a Scotish brawl; and he adds that this dance
continued in fashion to the close of the seventeenth century.[173:D]
Another dance of much celebrity at this period, was the Pavin or Pavan,
which, from the solemnity of its measure, seems to have been held in utter
aversion by Sir Toby Belch, who, in reference to his intoxicated surgeon,
exclaims,—"Then he's a rogue. After a passy-measure, or a pavin, I hate a
drunken rogue."[174:A] This is the text of Mr. Tyrwhitt; but the old copy
reads,—"Then he's a rogue, and a passy measure's pavyn," which is
probably correct; for the pavan was rendered still more grave by the
introduction of the passamezzo air, which obliged the dancers, after making
several steps round the room, to cross it in the middle in a slow step or
cinque pace. This alteration of time occasioned the term passamezzo to be
prefixed to the name of several dances; thus we read of the passamezzo
galliard, as well as the passamezzo pavan; and Sir Toby, by applying the

latter appellation to his surgeon, meant to call him, not only a rogue, but a
solemn coxcomb. "The pavan, from pavo a peacock," observes Sir J.
Hawkins, "is a grave and majestick dance. The method of dancing it was
anciently by gentlemen dressed with a cap and sword, by those of the long
robe in their gowns, by princes in their mantles, and by ladies in gowns
with long trains, the motion whereof in the dance resembled that of a
peacock's tail. This dance is supposed to have been invented by the
Spaniards, and its figure is given with the characters for the step, in the
Orchesographia of Thoinot Arbeau.—Of the passamezzo little is to be said,
except that it was a favourite air in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Ligon, in
his History of Barbadoes, mentions a passamezzo galliard, which, in the
year 1647, a Padre in that island played to him on the lute; the very same,
he says, with an air of that kind which in Shakspeare's play of Henry the
Fourth was originally played to Sir John Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet, by
Sneak, the musician, there named."[174:B]
Of equal gravity with the "doleful pavin," as Sir W. D'Avenant calls it,
was The Measure, to tread which was the relaxation of the most dignified
characters in the state, and formed a part of the revelry of the inns of court,
where the gravest lawyers were often found treading the measures.
Shakspeare puns upon the name of this dance, and contrasts it with the
Scotch jig, in Much Ado about Nothing, where he introduces Beatrice
telling her cousin Hero,—"The fault will be in the musick, cousin, if you be
not woo'd in good time: if the prince be too important, tell him, there is
measure in every thing, and so dance out the answer. For hear me, Hero:
Wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a
cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as
fantastical: the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a measure full of state and
ancientry; and then comes repentance, and, with his bad legs, falls into the
cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave."[175:A]

A more brisk and lively step accompanied the Canary dance, which was,
likewise, very fashionable:—"I have seen a medicine," says Lafeu in All's
Well that Ends Well, alluding to the influence of female charms,—

"That's able to breathe life into a stone;
Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary,
With spritely fire and motion;"[175:B]

and Moth advises Armado, when dancing the brawl, to Canary it with his
feet.[175:C]
The mode of performing this dance, is thus given by Mr. Douce, from
the treatise of Thoinot Arbeau:—"A lady is taken out by a gentleman, and
after dancing together to the cadences of the proper air, he leads her to the
end of the hall; this done he retreats back to the original spot, always
looking at the lady. Then he makes up to her again, with certain steps, and
retreats as before. His partner performs the same ceremony, which is several
times repeated by both parties, with various strange fantastic steps, very
much in the savage style."[175:D]
Beside the brawl, the pavan, the measure, and the canary, several other
dances were in vogue, under the general titles of corantoes, lavoltos, jigs,
galliards, and fancies, but the four which we have selected for more
peculiar notice, appear to have been the most celebrated.
It is a melancholy proof of the imperfect state of civilisation during the
reign of Elizabeth, that the barbarous sport of Bear and Bullbeating should
have been as favourite a diversion of the court, nobility, and gentry, as of
the lowest class of society. Indeed it would appear, from an order issued by
the privy council, in July, 1591, that the populace had earlier than their
superiors become tired of this cruel spectacle, and had given a marked
preference to the amusements of the stage; for it is enacted in the above
order, that there should be no plays publickly exhibited on Thursdays;

because on Thursdays, bear-baiting and such like pastimes had been
usually practised; and four days afterwards an injunction to the same effect
was sent to the Lord Mayor, in which, after justly reprobating the
performance of plays on the Sabbath, it is added, that on "all other days of
the week in divers place the players do use to recite their plays to the great
hurt and destruction of the game of bear-baiting, and like pastimes, which
are maintained for her Majesty's pleasure."[176:A]
History informs us that Elizabeth's pleasure was thus gratified at an early
period of her life, and continued to be so to the close of her reign. When
confined at Hatfield house, she, and her sister, Queen Mary, were recreated
with a grand exhibition of bear-baiting, "with which their highnesses were
right well content."[176:B] Soon after she had ascended the throne, she
entertained the French ambassadors with bear and bull baiting, and stood a
spectatress of the amusement until six in the evening; a similar exhibition
took place the next day at Paris-Garden, for the same party; and even
twenty-seven years posterior, Her Majesty could not devise a more
welcome gratification for the Danish ambassador, than the display of such a
spectacle at Greenwich.
So decided a partiality for this savage pastime would, of course, induce
her courtiers to take care that their mistress should not be disappointed in
this respect, and more especially when she honoured them with one of her
periodical visits. Accordingly Laneham tells us, that when she was at
Kenelworth Castle, in 1575, not less than thirteen bears were provided for
her diversion, and that these were baited with a large species of ban-dogs.
[177:A]

An example thus set by royalty itself, soon spread through every rank,
and bear and bull baiting became one of the most general amusements in
England. Shakspeare has alluded to it in more than twenty places, and it has
equally attracted the notice of the foreign and domestic historian. Hentzner,

whose Itinerary was printed in Latin A. D. 1598, was a spectator at one of
these exhibitions, which he describes in the following manner: speaking of
the theatres he says, "there is still another place, built in the form of a
theatre, which serves for the baiting of bulls and bears; they are fastened
behind, and then worried by great English bull-dogs, but not without great
risque to the dogs, from the horns of the one, and the teeth of the other; and
it sometimes happens they are killed on the spot; fresh ones are
immediately supplied in the places of those that are wounded or tired." He
then adds an account of a still more inhuman pastime:—"To this
entertainment, there often follows that of whipping a blinded bear, which is
performed by five or six men, standing circularly with whips, which they
exercise upon him without any mercy, as he cannot escape from them
because of his chain; he defends himself with all his force and skill,
throwing down all who come within his reach, and are not active enough to
get out of it, and tearing the whips out of their hands, and breaking them."
[177:B]
Stowe, in the edition of his Survey printed in 1618, remarks, that "as
for the bayting of Bulles and Beares, they are till this day much frequented,
namely, in Beare-gardens on the Bankside, wherein be prepared Scaffolds
for beholders to stand upon."[177:C]
The admission to these gardens was upon easy terms, for we are told that
the spectators paid "one pennie at the gate, another at the entrie of the
scaffold, and a third for quiet standing."[178:A] It was usual also for the
bearward to parade the streets with his animal, who had frequently a
monkey on his back and was preceded by a minstrel. The bear was
generally complimented with the name of his keeper: thus, in Shakspeare's
time, there was a celebrated one at Paris Garden called Sackerson. "I have
seen Sackerson loose," says Slender, "twenty times; and have taken him by
the chain: but, I warrant you, the women have so cried and shriek'd at it,
that it pass'd:—but women, indeed, cannot abide 'em; they are very ill-
favoured rough things[178:B];" in the "Puritan" published in 1607, occurs one

named George Stone; and in the "Humorous Lovers," by the Duke of
Newcastle, printed in 1617, Tom of Lincoln is the appellation of another.
A diversion infinitely more elegant and pleasing in all its
accompaniments, once of great utility, and unattended with the smallest
vestige of barbarism or inhumanity, we have now to record as resulting
from the use of the long bow, which, though greatly on the decline, in the
days of Elizabeth, as a weapon of warfare, still lingered amongst us as a
species of amusement. Various attempts, indeed, had been made by the
nearly immediate predecessors of Elizabeth, to revive the use of the long
bow as a military weapon; but with very partial success:—"the most
famous, prudent, politike and grave prince K. Henry the 7," says Robinson,
"was the first Phenix in chusing out a number of chiefe Archers to give
daily attendance upon his person, whom he named his Garde. But the high
and mighty renowmed prince his son, K. H. 8. (ann. 1509) not onely with
great prowes and praise proceeded in that which his father had begon; but
also added greater dignity unto the same, like a most roial renowmed
David, enacting a good and godly statute (ann. 33 H. 8. cap. 9.) for the use
and exercise of shooting in every degree. And further more for the
maintenance of the same laudable exercise in this honourable city of
London by his gratious charter confirmed unto the worshipful citizens of
the same, this your now famous order of Knightes of Prince Arthure's
Round Table or Society: like as in his life time when he saw a good Archer
indeede, he chose him and ordained such a one for a knight of the same
order."[179:A]
To this "Auncient Order, Societie, and Unitie Laudable, of Prince
Arthure," as it was termed, and to which Shakspeare alludes, under the
character of Justice Shallow, in the second part of King Henry the
Fourth[179:B], Archery owed, for some time, considerable support; but
ultimately, it contributed to hasten its decline. Under the auspices of Prince
Arthur, eldest son of King Henry VII., and who was so expert a bowman,

that every skilful shooter was complimented with his name, the society
flourished abundantly; its captain being honoured with his title, and the
other members being termed his knights. His brother Henry was equally
attached to the art, but unfortunately, having appointed a splendid match at
shooting with the long bow, at Windsor, an inhabitant of Shoreditch,
London, joining the archers, exhibited such extraordinary skill, that the
King, delighted with his performance, humorously gave him the title of
Duke of Shoreditch, an appellation which not only superseded the former
title, but, being copied by the inferior members, in assuming the rank of
Marquis, Earl, &c., threw such a degree of burlesque and ridicule over the
business, as finally brought contempt upon the art itself.
The Society, however, still subsisted with much magnificence during the
reign of Elizabeth; and in the very year that Robinson published his book in
support of Archery, namely, in 1583, "a grand shooting match was held in
London, and the captain of the archers assuming his title of Duke of
Shoreditch, summoned a suit of nominal nobility, under the titles of
Marquis of Barlo, of Clerkenwell, of Islington, of Hoxton, of Shacklewell,
and Earl of Pancrass, &c., and these meeting together at the appointed time,
with their different companies, proceeded in a pompous march from
Merchant Taylors' Hall, consisting of three thousand archers, sumptuously
apparelled; nine hundred and forty-two of them having chains of gold about
their necks. This splendid company was guarded by four thousand whifflers
and billmen, besides pages and footmen. They passed through Broad-street,
the residence of their captain, and thence into Moorfields, by Finsbury, and
so on to Smithfield, where having performed several evolutions, they shot
at a target for honour."[180:A]
Notwithstanding this brilliant celebration, it appears that, thirteen years
afterwards, the disuse of archery was so general, that the "Companies of
Bowyers and Fletchers" made heavy complaints, and procured a work to be
written, in order to place before "the nobility and gentlemen of England,"

their distress, and deprivation of subsistence, from the neglect of the bow.
The work is entitled, "A briefe Treatise, To proove the necessitie and
excellence of the Vse of Archerie. Abstracted out of ancient and moderne
writers, by R. S. Perused and allowed by Aucthoritie." 4to. 1596. This was
one of the last attempts to revive the bow as a weapon of defence, and it
records a contemporary and successful effort to repel cavalry by its
adoption on the part of a rebel force.
"About Bartholomew tyde last, 1595," relates the author, "there came out
of Scotland one James Forgeson, bowyer to the King of Scots, who credibly
reported, that about two years past, certaine rebelles did rise there against
the King, who sent against them five hundred horsemen well appointed.
They meeting three hundred of the rebel's bowmen, encountered each with
other, when the bowemen slue two hundred and fourscore of their horses,
and killed, wounded, and sore hurt most part of the Kinge's men.
Whereupon the said Forgeson was sent hether from the King with
commission to buy up ten thousande bowes and bowstaves: but because he
could not speed heer, he went over into the East countries for them."[181:A]
The Toxophilus of Ascham, first published in 1544, was written in order
"that stil, according to the olde wont of Englande, youth should use it for
the most honest pastime in peace, that men might handle it as a most sure
weapon in warre."[181:B] The latter of these purposes so completely failed,
that the use of the bow as an offensive or defensive weapon of warfare
totally ceased in the time of James the First; but the former was partially
gained, as the treatise of Ascham certainly contributed to prolong the reign
of archery as a mere recreation, though it could not retrieve its character as
an instrument for the destruction of game. So early, indeed, as 1531, we
learn from Sir Thomas Elyot's "Boke named the Governour," that cross-
bows and guns had then superseded the long-bow, in the sports of the field:
—"Verylye I suppose," says he, "that before crosbowes and handegunnes
were broughte into this realme, by the sleyghte of our enemies, to the entent

to distroye the noble defence of archerye, continuall use of shootynge in the
longe bowe made the feate soo perfecte and exacte among englyshemen,
that thei than as surely and soone kylled suche game whiche thei lysted to
have, as thei nowe can do with the crossebowe or gunne."[181:C]
The cross-bow was the fashionable instrument for killing game, even
with the ladies, in the days of Elizabeth; the Queen was peculiarly fond of
the sport, and her example was eagerly followed by the female part of her
court. Shakspeare represents the Princess and her ladies, in Love's Labour's
Lost, thus employed[182:A]; and Mr. Lodge informs us, through the medium
of a letter, written by Sir Francis Leake in 1605, that the Countess of
Shrewsbury, and the ladies of the Cavendish family, were ardently attached
to this diversion.[182:B]
That the honest pastime of shooting with the long bow was often
commuted, in the capital, for amusements of a much less innocent nature,
we learn from Stowe, who attributes the decline of archery, as a diversion,
to the enclosure of common grounds in the vicinity of the metropolis:
—"What should I speake," says he, "of the ancient dayly exercises in the
long Bow by citizens of this citie, now almoste cleane left off and forsaken:
I over passe it: for by the meanes of closing in of common grounds, our
Archers for want of roome to shoote abroad, creep into bowling allies, and
ordinarie dicing-houses neerer home, where they have roome enough to
hazard their money at unlawfull games."[182:C]
Among the amusements more peculiarly belonging to the metropolis,
and which better than any other exhibits the fashionable mode, at that time,
of disposing of the day, we may enumerate the custom of publickly
parading in the middle isle of St. Paul's Cathedral. During the reign of
Elizabeth and James, Paul's Walk, as it was called, was daily frequented by
the nobility, gentry, and professional men; here, from ten to twelve in the
forenoon, and from three to six in the afternoon, they met to converse on

business, politics, or pleasure; and hither too, in order to acquire fashions,
form assignations for the gaming table, or shun the grasp of the bailiff,
came the gallant, the gamester, and the debtor, the stale knight, and the
captain out of service; and here it was that Falstaff purchased Bardolph; "I
bought him," says the jolly knight, "at Paul's."[183:A]
Of the various purposes for which this temple was frequented by the
loungers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Decker has left us a
most entertaining account, and from his tract on this subject, published in
1609, we shall extract a few passages which throw no incurious light on the
follies and dissipation of the age.
The supposed tomb of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, but in reality that
of Guy Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, appears to have been a privileged part
of the Cathedral:—"The Duke's tomb," observes Decker, addressing the
gallant, "is a sanctuary; and will keep you alive from worms, and land rats,
that long to be feeding on your carcass: there you may spend your legs in
winter a whole afternoon; converse, plot, laugh, and talk any thing; jest at
your creditor, even to his face; and in the evening, even by lamp-light, steal
out; and so cozen a whole covey of abominable catch-polls."[183:B]
Such was the resort of the male fashionable world to this venerable
Gothic pile, that it was customary for trades-people to frequent its aisles for
the purpose of collecting the dresses of the day. "If you determine to enter
into a new suit, warn your tailor to attend you in Pauls, who, with his hat in
his hand, shall like a spy discover the stuff, colour, and fashion of any
doublet or hose that dare be seen there, and, stepping behind a pillar to fill
his table books with those notes, will presently send you into the world an
accomplished man; by which means you shall wear your clothes in print
with the first edition."[183:C]
The author even condescends to instruct his beau, when he has obtained
his suit, how best to exhibit it in St. Paul's, and concludes by pointing out

other recourses for killing time, on withdrawing from the cathedral. "Bend
your course directly in the middle line, that the whole body of the church
may appear to be yours; where, in view of all, you may publish your suit in
what manner you affect most, either with the slide of your cloak from the
one shoulder: and then you must, as 'twere in anger, suddenly snatch at the
middle of the inside, if it be taffeta at the least; and so by that means your
costly lining is betrayed, or else by the pretty advantage of compliment. But
one note by the way do I especially woo you to, the neglect of which makes
many of our gallants cheap and ordinary, that by no means you be seen
above four turns; but in the fifth make yourself away, either in some of the
semsters' shops, the new tobacco-office, or amongst the booksellers, where,
if you cannot read, exercise your smoke, and inquire who has writ against
this divine weed, &c."[184:A]
After dinner it was necessary that the finished coxcomb should return to
Paul's in a new dress:—"After dinner you may appear again, having
translated yourself out of your English cloth into a light Turkey grogram, if
you have that happiness of shifting; and then be seen, for a turn or two, to
correct your teeth with some quill or silver instrument, and to cleanse your
gums with a wrought handkerchief: it skills not whether you dined, or no;
that is best known to your stomach; or in what place you dined; though it
were with cheese, of your own mother's making, in your chamber or study."
[184:B]

The fopperies exhibited in a place, which ought to have been closed
against such unhallowed inmates, rival, if not exceed, all that modern
puppyism can produce. The directions which Decker gives to his gallant on
quitting St. Paul's in the forenoon, clearly prove, that the loungers of
Shakspeare's time are not surpassed, either in affectation or the assumption
of petty consequence, by the same worthless class of the nineteenth century:
—"in which departure," enjoins the satirist, "if by chance you either
encounter, or aloof off throw your inquisitive eye upon any knight or squire,

being your familiar, salute him not by his name of Sir such a one, or so; but
call him Ned, or Jack, &c. This will set off your estimation with great men:
and if, though there be a dozen companies between you, 'tis the better, he
call aloud to you, for that is most genteel, to know where he shall find you
at two o'clock; tell him at such an ordinary, or such; and be sure to name
those that are dearest, and whither none but your gallants resort."[185:A]
A still more offensive mode of displaying this ostentatious folly, sprang
from a custom then general, and even now not altogether obsolete, of
demanding spur-money from any person entering the cathedral during
divine service, with spurs on. This was done by the younger choristers, and,
it seems, frequently gave birth to the following gross violation of decency:
"Never be seen to mount the steps into the quire, but upon a high festival
day, to prefer the fashion of your doublet; and especially if the singing-boys
seem to take note of you; for they are able to buzz your praises above their
anthems, if their voices have not lost their maiden heads: but be sure your
silver spurs dog your heels, and then the boys will swarm about you like so
many white butterflies[185:B]; when you in the open quire shall draw forth a
perfumed embroidered purse, the glorious sight of which will entice many
countrymen from their devotion to wondering: and quoit silver into the
boy's hands, that it may be heard above the first lesson, although it be read
in a voice as big as one of the great organs."[185:C]
The tract from which we have taken these curious illustrations, contains
also a passage which serves to show, that London, in the time of our poet,
was not unprovided with exhibitions of the docility, sagacity, and tricks of
animals; and this, with similar relations, will tend to prove, that the
ingenious Mr. Astley, and the Preceptor of the learned pig, had been
anticipated both in skill and perseverance. Decker, after conducting his
"mere country gentleman" to the top of St. Paul's, proceeds thus:—"Hence
you may descend, to talk about the horse that went up; and strive, if you
can, to know his keeper; take the day of the month, and the number of the

steps; and suffer yourself to believe verily that it was not a horse, but
something else in the likeness of one: which wonders you may publish,
when you return into the country, to the great amazement of all farmer's
daughters, that will almost swoon at the report, and never recover till their
bans be asked twice in the church."[186:A]
This is the dancing-horse alluded to by Shakspeare, in Love's Labour's
Lost[186:B]; an English bay gelding, fourteen years old, and named Morocco.
He had been taught by one Banks, a Scotchman, and their fame was spread
over a great part of Europe; "if Banks had lived in older times," remarks Sir
Walter Raleigh, "he would have shamed all the inchanters in the world: for
whosoever was most famous among them, could never master, or instruct
any beast as he did."[186:C] It was the misfortune, indeed, of this man and
his horse to be taken for enchanters; while at Paris, they had a narrow
escape, being imprisoned for dealing with the devil, and at length liberated,
on the magistrates discovering that the whole was merely the effect of
human art[186:D]; but at Rome they fell a sacrifice to the more rivetted
superstitions of the people, and were both burnt as magicians; a fate to
which Ben Jonson adverts in the following lines:—

"But amongst those Tiberts, who do you think there was?
Old Bankes the juggler, our Pythagoras,
Grave tutor to the learned horse. Both which,
Being, beyond sea, burned for one witch,
Their spirits transmigrated to a cat."[186:E]

Nor were the feats of this sagacious horse unrivalled by the wonderful
acquirements of other animals. The praise of Morocco is frequently
combined by the poets and satirists of the age, with an account of the
extraordinary tricks of his contemporary brutes: thus John Taylor, the water-
poet, places Holden's camel on a level with Banks's horse:—

"Old Holden's camel, or fine Bankes his cut;"

and Bishop Hall, in his satires, brings us acquainted with a sagacious
elephant, to which he kindly adds a couple of wonders of a different
description; a bullock with two tails, and a fiddling friar. He is describing
the metamorphosis which London had produced in the person and manners
of a young farmer, and adds,

"The tenants wonder at their landlord's sonne,
And blesse them at so sudden coming on,
More than who vies his pence to view some trick
Of strange Marocco's dumb arithmetick,
Of the young elephant, or two-tayl'd steere,
Or the rigg'd camel, or fiddling frere."[187:A]

The catalogue of wonders, monsters, and tricks, may be augmented by a
reference to Ben Jonson, who, in his Bartholomew Fair, among other
spectacles, speaks of a Bull with five legs and two pizzles, Dogs dancing the
morrice, and a Hare beating the Tabor.[187:B]
But of all the amusements which distinguish the age of Shakspeare, none
could vie in richness, splendour, or invention, with the costly spectacles,
called Masques, and Pageants. The frequency of these exhibitions during
the reigns of Elizabeth and James is astonishing, if we consider the
immense expense which was lavished on their production; the most
celebrated poets and the most skilful artists often assisted in their formation;
nor was it uncommon to behold nobility, or even royalty itself, assuming
the part of actors in these romantic entertainments.
What a gorgeous and voluptuous court could effect, in seconding the
efforts of consummate skill, through the medium of machinery, decoration,
and dress, may be collected from the numerous Masques of Ben Jonson,

who seems to feel the inadequacy of language to express the beauty,
grandeur, and sumptuousness of the devices employed on these occasions.
Thus, in his Hymenæi, or the Solemnities of Masque and Barriers at a
Marriage, he manifestly labours to paint the scene, and, at length, professes
himself unequal to the task of conveying the impressions which it had made
upon him. "Hitherto," says he, "extended the first night's solemnity, whose
grace in the execution left, not where to add to it, with wishing: I mean (nor
do I court them) in those, that sustained the nobler parts. Such was the
exquisite performance, as (beside the pomp, splendor, or what we may call
apparelling of such presentments), that alone (had all else been absent) was
of power to surprise with delight, and steal away the spectators from
themselves. Nor was there wanting whatsoever might give to the furniture
or complement; either in riches, or strangeness of the habits, delicacy of
dances, magnificence of the scene, or divine rapture of musick. Only the
envy was, that it lasted not still; or, (now it is past) cannot by imagination,
much less description, be recovered to a part of that spirit it had in the
gliding by."[188:A]
Nothing, indeed, shows the romantic disposition of Elizabeth, and,
indeed, of her times, more evidently than the Triumph, as it was called,
devised and performed with great solemnity, in honour of the French
commissioners for the Queen's marriage with the Duke of Anjou, in 1581.
The contrivance was for four of her principal courtiers, under the quaint
appellation of "four foster-children of Desire," to besiege and carry, by dint
of arms, "The Fortress of Beauty;" intending, by this courtly ænigma,
nothing less than the Queen's Majesty's own person. The actors in this
famous triumph were, the Earl of Arundel, the Lord Windsor, Master Philip
Sidney, and Master Fulk Grevil. And the whole was conducted so entirely in
the spirit and language of knight-errantry, that nothing in the Arcadia itself
is more romantic.[189:A]

The example of the court was followed with equal profusion by the
citizens, and various corporate bodies of the capital, who contended with
each other in the cost bestowed on these performances. In 1604, when King
James and his Queen passed triumphantly from the Tower to Westminster,
the citizens erected seven gates or arches, in different parts of the space
through which the procession had to proceed. Over the first arch "was
represented the true likeness of all the notable houses, towers, and steeples,
within the citie of London.—The sixt arche or gate of triumph was erected
above the Conduit in Fleete-Streete, whereon the Globe of the world was
seen to move, &c. At Temple-bar a seaventh arche or gate was erected, the
forefront whereof was proportioned in every respect like a Temple, being
dedicated to Janus, &c.—The citie of Westminster, and dutchy of Lancaster,
at the Strand, had erected the invention of a rainbow, the moone, sunne, and
starres, advanced between two Pyramids."[190:A]
In 1612-13, the gentlemen of the inns of court presented a masque in
honour of the marriage of the Elector Palatine of the Rhine, with the
Princess Elizabeth, of which the poetry was the composition of Chapman,
and the machinery the invention of Inigo Jones. The expense of this
pageantry amounted, according to Dugdale[190:B], to one thousand and
eighty-six pounds eight shillings and eleven pence, and was conducted with
uncommon splendour. "First rode," relates Howes, "fiftie choyce gentlemen
richly attyred, and as gallantly mounted, with every one his footemen to
attend him: These rode very stately like a vauntguard." Next to these
appeared an antique or mock-masque. "After them came two chariots
triumphal, very pleasant and full of state, wherein rode the choyce
musitians of this kingdome, in robes like to the Virginian priests, with
sundry devises, all pleasant and significant, with two rankes of torches:
Then came the chiefe maskers with great State in white Indian habit, or like
the great princes of Barbary, richly imbrodered with the golden sun, with
suteable ornaments in all poynts, about their necks were rufs of feathers,

spangled and beset with pearle and silver, and upon their heads lofty
corronets suteable to the rest."[190:C]
Nor were these fanciful and ever varying pageants productive merely of
amusement; they had higher aims, and more important effects, and, while
ostensibly constructed for the purposes of compliment and entertainment,
either indirectly inculcated some lesson of moral wisdom, or more
immediately obtained their end, by impersonating the vices and the virtues,
and exhibiting a species of ethic drama.
They had also the merit of conveying no inconsiderable fund of
instruction from the stores of mythology, history, and philosophy. Of this
the masques of Jonson afford abundant proof, containing, as they do, not
only the common superficial knowledge on these subjects, but displaying
such a mass of recondite learning, illustrative of the manners, opinions,
customs, and antiquities of the ancient world, as would serve to extend the
information of the educated, while they delighted and instructed the body of
the people.
To these classical diversions, these eruditæ voluptates, which were
remarkably frequent during the whole era of Shakspeare's existence, we
may confidently ascribe some portion of that intimacy with the records of
history, the fictions of paganism, and the reveries of philosophy which our
poet so copiously exhibits throughout his poems and plays, as well as no
small accession to the wild and fantastic visionary forms that so pre-
eminently delight us in the golden dreams of his imagination.
Among the numerous scenes and descriptions which owe their birth, in
our author's dramas, to these superb combinations of mechanism and poesy,
we shall select two passages that more peculiarly point out the manner in
which he has availed himself of their scenery and arrangement.
"There is a passage in Antony and Cleopatra," observes Mr. Warton,
"where the metaphor is exceedingly beautiful; but where the beauty both of

the expression and the allusion is lost, unless we recollect the frequency and
the nature of these shows (the Pageants) in Shakspeare's age. I must cite the
whole of the context, for the sake of the last hemistick.

"Ant. Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish,
A vapour sometime, like a bear or lion;
A towred citadel, a pendant rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon't, that nod unto the world,
And mock our eyes with air: Thou hast seen these signs;
They are Black Vesper's Pageants."[191:A]

This illustrious critic, however, should have continued the quotation
somewhat further; for the next three lines include a piece of imagery
immediately taken from the same source, and more worthy of remark than
any preceding allusion:—

"Eros. Ay, my lord.

Ant. That, which is now a horse; even with a thought,
The Rack dislimns; and makes it indistinct,
As water is in water."[192:A]

The meaning of the expression, "The Rack dislimns," is clearly
ascertained by a reference to Ben Jonson's Hymenæal Masque already
quoted, in which occurs the following striking passage:—"Here the upper
part of the scene, which was all of clouds, and made artificially to swell and
ride like the Rack, began to open, and the air clearing, in the top thereof was
discovered Juno sitting in a throne, supported by two beautiful peacocks.—
Round about her sate the spirits of the ayre, in several colours, making
musique. Above her the region of fire, with a continual motion, was seen to
whirl circularly, and Jupiter standing in the top (figuring the heaven)

brandishing his thunder. Beneath her the rainbow Iris, and, on the two sides
eight ladies, attired richly, and alike, in the most celestial colours, who
represented her powers, as she is the Governess of Marriage."[192:B]
This extract, also, together with the one given in a preceding page,
descriptive of the Citizen's Pageant in honour of James and his Queen,
1604, will throw a strong light on a celebrated passage in the Tempest, and
fully prove our poet's extensive obligations to these very ingenious devices:
—

"Our revels now are ended: These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea all, which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind."[193:A]

The towers, the temples, and the great globe itself of these lines, we find
exhibited in the pageant of 1604, eight or ten years anterior to the
representation of this play; while in the masque of Jonson, we perceive the
occasion of its performance to have been similar to that which gave origin
to the insubstantial pageant of Prospero, both being Hymenæal Masques,
both likewise including among their actors the characters of Iris and Juno,
and both being accompanied by spirits of the ayre making musick.
Here the term rack, in both quotations from our poet, manifestly appears,
from the passage in Ben Jonson's masque, to have been drawn from the
machinery of the pageant, and to have implied masses of clouds in motion;
the lines from Antony and Cleopatra, alluding to their mutability and

endless diversity, and those in the Tempest importing their utter
insignificance and instability when compared with the more durable
materials of the pageant; and hence emphatically founding on their
evanescence, a complete picture of entire dissolution, that, like the
insubstantial pageant which had just vanished from their eyes, not only
towers, palaces, temples, and the globe itself, should disappear, but even not
the most trifling part of the fabric of the world, not even the passing clouds,
the fleeting rack, should be left behind, as a memorial of existence.
Upon no occasions were these imposing spectacles, the masque, the
pageant, and the triumph, gotten up with more gorgeous splendour, than
during the Progresses which Elizabeth so frequently made throughout the
course of her long reign. Every nobleman's house was thrown open for her
reception whilst thus engaged, and the keenest rivalry was excited amongst
them, with regard to the expense, magnificence, variety, and duration of the
entertainments which they lavished upon her. Nor was the Queen at all
scrupulous in accepting their invitations, for she considered this hospitality,
however ruinous to the individual, as a necessary attention, and, in fact,
entered the mansions of her courtiers with the same feelings of property, as
when she sate down beneath the roof of what might more strictly be termed
her own palaces. That her subjects were complaisant enough to acquiesce in
this assumption, is evident from a passage in Harrison's Description of
England, who mentioning the variety of the Queen's houses, adds,—"But
what shall I need to take upon me to repeat all, and tell what houses the
queen's majesty hath? Sith all is hirs; and when it pleaseth hir in the
summer season to recreate hirself abroad, and view the state of the countrie,
and hear the complaints of hir unjust officers or substitutes, every
nobleman's house is hir palace, where she continueth during pleasure, and
till she returne again to some of hir owne." One of the most striking proofs
of the frequency and oppression of these royal visits, has been recorded by
Mr. Nichols, who tells us, that "she was twelve times at Theobald's, which

was a very convenient distance from London. Each visit cost Cecil two or
three thousand pounds; the Queen lying there at his Lordships charge,
sometimes three weeks, or a month, or six weeks together."[194:A]
These Progresses, however, of which Mr. Nichols has presented us with
a most curious and ample collection, serve, more than any other documents
which history could afford, to impress us with an accurate and interesting
idea of the hospitality, diversions, costume, and domestic economy, of the
great Baronial Chieftains of our last romantic reign. From them, observes
their very ingenious editor, "much of the manners of the times may be
learned. They give us a view into the interior of the noble families, display
their state in house-keeping, and other articles, and set before our eyes their
magnificent mansions long since gone to decay, or supplanted by others of
the succeeding age."[194:B]
Perhaps the most splendid reception which Elizabeth met with, in the
whole course of her Progresses, was at Kenelworth-castle, in Warwickshire,
the seat of the once all-powerful Earl of Leicester. Some slight notice of this
place, as having probably attracted the attention of young Shakspeare,
during the visit of Her Majesty, has already been given in a former part of
our work; but it will be necessary here, in order to impart a just conception
of the costly entertainments which awaited the Queen on these excursions,
to give a brief catalogue of the ten days "princely pleasures" of Kenelworth
castle.
Her Majesty reached Lord Leicester's on Saturday, the ninth of July,
1575, and was greeted, on her approach to the castle, by a Sibyl,
prophesying prosperity to her government. Six giants stood ready to receive
her at the outer gate apparently blowing trumpets, which were in reality
sounded by persons placed behind them, while the Porter, representing
Hercules, addressed her in a metrical speech, "proclaiming open gates and
free passage to all, and yielding to her on his knees, his club, keys, and

office." Arriving at the base court, a female figure, appropriately dressed,
"came all over the pool, being so conveyed, that it seemed she had gone
upon the water; she was attended by two water-nymphs, and calling herself
the Lady of the Lake," complimented Her Majesty, who, passing on to the
inner court, crossed the bridge, which was ornamented with seven pillars on
each side, exhibiting on their summits, birds in cages, fruits in silver bowls,
corn in similar vessels, wine and grapes in silver pots, fishes in trays,
weapons of war, and musical instruments, the respective gifts of Silvanus,
Pomona, Ceres, Bacchus, Neptune, Mars, and Apollo. Then, preceded by a
noble band of music, the Queen crossed the inner court, alighted from her
horse, and entered her apartments.
On Sunday evening, she beheld a grand display of fire-works, a species
of amusement which had been little known previous to her reign: "after a
warning piece or two," says Laneham, "was a blaze of burning darts flying
to and fro, beams of stars coruscant, streams and hail of fire-sparks,
lightnings of wild fire on the water; and on the land, flight and shot of
thunder-bolts, all with such continuance, terror, and vehemence, the
heavens thundered, the waters surged, and the earth shook."
Monday was occupied by hunting, conducted on a large and magnificent
scale, during which Her Majesty was ingeniously complimented through
the medium of several sylvan devices.
Music, dancing, and pageantry on the water, formed the diversions of
the Tuesday.
Hunting and field sports consumed the Wednesday; bear-baiting,
tumbling, and fire-works, were the recreations of the Thursday; and, the
weather not permitting any out-door diversions on Friday, the time was
spent in banquetting, shows, and domestic games.
On Saturday, the morning being fine, the Queen was highly entertained
by the representation of a country bride-ale, by running at the quintain, and

by the "Old Coventry Play of Hock Thursday;" while the evening
diversions were a regular play, a banquet, and a masque.
The amusement of hunting was resumed on the Monday, returning from
which Her Majesty was highly gratified by a pageant on the water,
exhibiting, among other spectacles, Arion seated upon a dolphin twenty-
four feet in length, and singing a song, accompanied by the music of six
performers, who were snugly lodged in the belly of the fish.
The Coventry play not having been finished on the preceding Saturday,
was repeated, at the desire of the Queen, on the Tuesday, and on Wednesday
the 20th, she bade adieu to Kenelworth, greatly delighted with the
hospitality and princely splendour of its noble owner.[196:A]
The Hall and the Tiltyard were two of the most striking features at
Kenelworth, and they designate with sufficient precision two of the leading
characteristics of the age of Elizabeth, its hospitality, and attachment to
chivalric costume; the former was carried on upon a scale to which modern
usage is a perfect stranger; for, as Bishop Hurd remarks, "the same bell, that
called the great man to his table, invited the neighbourhood all around, and
proclaimed a holiday to the whole country[197:A];" and the latter cherished
its predilections, and romantic ardour, by cultivating tilting, the sole
remaining offspring of the gorgeous tournament, with scientific skill. The
latter half of the sixteenth, and the commencement of the seventeenth,
century, saw, indeed, the diversion of running at the ring carried to its
highest degree of perfection, from which, however, it very soon afterwards
began to decline, and may be said to have expired with the reign of James
the First.
Yet the influence of this amusement, in exciting the heroism of the
Elizabethan age, was by no means inconsiderable, and we may view the tilt-
yard of Kenelworth, with the eyes of Dr. Hurd, "as a nursery of brave men,
a very seed-plot of warriors and heroes.—And, as whimsical a figure as a

young tilter may make in a modern eye, who will say that the virtue was not
formed here, that triumphed at Axell, and bled at Zutphen."[197:B]
To complete the picture of Kenelworth-castle during this festive period,
it would be desirable, could we ascertain what were the domestic economy
and usages which were adopted in so large a household, and how the
Queen, her ladies, and attendants, contrived to pass the hours, when the
weather forbade exterior diversions, and when the masque, the banquet, and
the fete, had exhausted their attractions. Fortunately we possess a sketch of
this kind, from the communicative pen of Laneham, who seems to have
been gifted, if we may trust his own account, with great powers of pleasing,
and to have enjoyed, in an extraordinary degree, the favour and confidence
of the high-born dames of honour who followed in the train of Elizabeth.
"Methought it my part," he relates in a letter to his friend, "somewhat to
impart unto you how it is here with me, and how I lead my life, which
indeed is this:—
"A mornings I rise ordinarily at seven o'clock: Then ready, I go into the
Chapel; soon after eight, I get me commonly into my Lord's chamber, or
into my Lord's presidents. There at the cupboard, after I have eaten the
manchet served overnight for livery (for I dare be as bold, I promise you, as
any of my friends the servants there: and indeed could I have fresh, if I
would tarry; but I am of wont jolly and dry a mornings): I drink me up a
good bol of ale: when in a sweet pot it is defecated by all night's standing,
the drink is the better, take that of me: and a morsel in a morning, with a
sound draught; is very wholesome and good for the eye-sight: Then I am as
fresh all the forenoon after, as had I eaten a whole piece of beef. Now, Sir, if
the Council sit, I am at hand; wait at an inch, I warrant you: If any man
make babbling, 'Peace,' say I, 'wot ye where ye are?' If I take a listener, or a
pryer in at the chinks or at the lock-hole, I am by and by in the bones of
him: But now they keep good order, they know me well enough: If a be a

friend, or such a one as I like, I make him sit down by me on a form or a
chest; let the rest walk, a God's name.
"And here doth my language now and then stand me in good stead: My
French, my Spanish, my Dutch, and my Latin: Sometime among
Ambassador's men, if their Master be within the Council: Sometime with
the Ambassador himself, if he bid call his lacky, or ask me what's a clock;
and I warrant ye I answer him roundly; that they marvel to see such a fellow
there: then laugh I and say nothing: Dinner and supper I have twenty places
to go to, and heartily prayed to: Sometime get I to Master Pinner; by my
faith, a worshipful Gentleman, and as careful for his charge as any her
Highness hath: there find I alway good store of very good viands; we eat,
and be merry, thank God and the Queen. Himself in feeding very temperate
and moderate as ye shall see any: and yet, by your leave, of a dish, as a cold
pigeon or so, that hath come to him at meat more than he looked for, I have
seen him een so by and by surfeit, as he hath plucked off his napkin, wiped
his knife, and eat not a morsel more; like enough to stick in his stomach a
two days after: (some hard message from the higher officers; perceive ye
me?) upon search, his faithful dealing and diligence hath found him
faultless.
"In afternoons and a nights, sometime am I with the right worshipful Sir
George Howard, as good a Gentleman as any lives: And sometime, at my
good Lady Sidneys chamber, a Noblewoman that I am as much bound unto,
as any poor man may be unto so gracious a Laday; and sometime in some
other place. But always among the Gentlewomen by my good will; (O, ye
know thatt comes always of a gentle spirit:) And when I see company
according, then can I be as lively too: Sometime I foot it with dancing: now
with my gittern, and else with my cittern, then at the virginals: Ye know
nothing comes amiss to me: Then carol I up a song withal; that by and by
they come flocking about me like bees to honey: And ever they cry,
'Another, good Langham, another!' Shall I tell you? When I see Mistress

—— (A, see a mad Knave; I had almost told all!) that she gives once but an
eye or an ear; why then, man, am I blest; my grace, my courage, my
cunning is doubled: She says, sometime, 'She likes it;' and then I like it
much the better; it doth me good to hear how well I can do. And to say
truth; what with mine eyes, as I can amorously gloat it, with my Spanish
sospires, my French heighes, mine Italian dulcets, my Dutch hoves, my
double releas, my high reaches, my fine feigning, my deep diapason, my
wanton warbles, my running, my timing, my tuning, and my twinkling, I
can gracify the matters as well as the proudest of them, and was yet never
stained, I thank God: By my troth, Countryman, it is some time high
midnight, ere I can get from them. And thus have I told ye most of my
trade, all the live-long day: what will ye more, God save the Queene and
my Lord."[199:A]
Of this magnificent castle, the unrivalled abode of baronial hospitality,
and chivalric pageantry, who can avoid lamenting the present irreparable
decay, or forbear apostrophising the mouldering reliques in the pathetic, and
picturesque language, which Bishop Hurd has placed in the mouth of his
admired Addison?
"Where, one might ask, are the tilts and tournaments, the princely shows
and sports, which were once so proudly celebrated within these walls?
Where are the pageants, the studied devices, and emblems of curious
invention, that set the court at a gaze, and even transported the high soul of
our Elizabeth? Where now, pursued he, (pointing to that which was
formerly a canal, but at present is only a meadow, with a small rivulet
running through it) where is the floating island, the blaze of torches that
eclipsed the day, the lady of the lake, the silken nymphs her attendants, with
all the other fantastic exhibitions surpassing even the whimsies of the
wildest romance? What now is become of the revelry of feasting? of the
minstrelsy that took the ear so delightfully as it babbled along the valley, or
floated on the surface of this lake? See there the smokeless kitchens,

stretching to a length that might give room for the sacrifice of a hecatomb;
the vaulted hall, which mirth and jollity have set so often in an uproar; the
rooms of state, and the presence-chamber: what are they now but void and
tenantless ruins, clasped with ivy, open to wind and weather, and
representing to the eye nothing but the ribs and carcase, as it were, of their
former state? And see, said he, that proud gate-way, once the mansion of a
surly porter, who, partaking of the pride of his lord, made the crowds wait,
and refused admittance, perhaps, to nobles whom fear or interest drew to
these walls, to pay their homage to their master: see it now the residence of
a poor tenant, who turns the key but to let himself out to his daily labour, to
admit him to a short meal, and secure his nightly slumbers."[200:A]
To this account of some of the principal diversions of the court and the
metropolis, we have now to subjoin, in a compass corresponding with the
scale of our work, a clear, but necessarily a brief view, of an amusement
which, more than any other, is calculated to interest, and to influence every
class of society. The state, economy, and usages of THE STAGE, therefore,
during the age of Shakspeare, will occupy the remainder of this chapter,
forming an introduction to a sketch of dramatic poetry, at the period of
Shakspeare's commencement as a writer for the stage.
The reader is probably aware, from the very copious and bulky, though
somewhat indigested, collections, which have been published on this
subject, that the following detail, consisting of an arrangement of minute
facts, and which aims at nothing more than a neat and lucid compendium of
an intricate topic, must necessarily, at almost every step, be indebted to
previous researches; in order, therefore, to obviate a continual parade of
reference, let it suffice, that we acknowledge the basis of our disquisition to
have been derived from the labours of Steevens and Malone, as included in
the last variorum edition of Shakspeare; from the two Apologies of Mr.
Chalmers; from Decker, as reprinted by Nott; and occasionally, from the

pages of Warton, Percy, Whiter, and Gilchrist. Where references, however,
are absolutely essential, they will be found in their due place.
It has been justly observed by Mr. Chalmers, that "what Augustus said of
Rome, may be remarked of Elizabeth and the stage, that she found it brick,
and left it marble."[201:A] At her accession in 1558, no regular theatre had
been established, and the players of that period, even in the capital, were
compelled to have recourse to the yards of great Inns, as the most
commodious places which they could obtain for the representation of their
pieces. These, being surrounded by open stages and galleries, and
possessing, likewise, numerous private apartments and recesses from which
the genteeler part of the audience might become spectators at their ease,
while the central space held a temporary stage, uncovered in fine weather,
and protected by an awning in bad, were not ill calculated for the purposes
of scenic exhibition, and, most undoubtedly, gave rise to the form and
construction, adopted in the erection of the licensed theatres.
In this stage of infancy was the public stage at the birth of Shakspeare;
nor would it so rapidly have emerged into importance, had not the Queen,
though occasionally yielding to the enmity and fanaticism of the puritans
with regard to this recreation, been warmly attached to theatric
amusements. So early as 1569, was she frequently entertained in her own
chapel-royal, by the performance of plays on profane subjects, by the
children belonging to that establishment; and the year following has been
fixed upon as the most probable era of the erection of a regular play-house,
very appropriately named The Theatre, and supposed to have been situated
in the Blackfriars.
We shall not be surprised, therefore, to find, that in 1574 a regular
company of players was established by royal licence, granting to James
Burbage, John Perkyn, John Lanham, William Johnson, and Robert Wilson,
servants of the Earl of Leicester, authority, under the privy seal, "to use,

exercyse and occupie the arte and facultye of playenge commedies,
tragedies, enterludes, stage-playes, and such other like as they have alreadie
used and studied, or hereafter shall use and studie, as well for the recreation
of our lovinge subjects as for our solace and pleasure when we shall thinke
good to see them—throughoute our realme of England."[202:A]
This may be considered then, with great probability, as the first general
licence obtained by any company of players in England; but, with the
customary precaution of Elizabeth, it contains a clause, subjecting all
dramatic amusements to the previous inspection of the Master of the Revels,
an officer who, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, had been created to
superintend a part of the duties which until then had fallen to the province
of the Lord Chamberlain, and who now had the sphere of his control
augmented by this prudent enactment, providing "that the saide commedies,
tragedies, enterludes and stage-playes be by the Master of our Revels for
the tyme beynge before sene and allowed."
The officers who exercised this authority, during the life of Shakspeare,
were Sir Thomas Benger, Edmond Tilney, and Sir George Bucke. Sir
Thomas Benger, who succeeded Sir Thomas Cawerden in 1560, lived not to
see Shakspeare's entrance into the scenic world, but, dying in 1577, Tilney's
appointment took place in 1579. This gentleman continued to regulate the
stage for the long period of thirty-one years; he beheld the dawn and the
mid-day splendour of Shakspeare's dramatic genius, and in his official
capacity, he enjoyed the opportunity of licensing not less than thirty of his
dramas, commencing with Henry the Sixth, and terminating with Antony
and Cleopatra. On his death, in 1610, Sir George Bucke, who had obtained
a reversionary patent for the office in 1603, and had executed its duties for
twelvemonth previous to Tilney's decease, became Master of the Revels,
and had the felicity of reading, and the honour of licensing, some of the last
and noblest productions of our immortal poet, namely, Timon of Athens,
Coriolanus, Othello, the Tempest, and Twelfth Night. He also lived to

deplore the premature extinction of this unrivalled bard, and he died in the
year which presented to the public the first folio edition of his plays.
The erection of a theatre in 1570; the establishment by royal authority of
a regular company in 1574; and the subjection of both to highly respectable
officers, operated so strongly in favour of dramatic amusements, that we
find Stubbes, the puritanic satirist, bitterly inveighing in 1583 against the
great popular support of the theatres in his day, which he sarcastically terms
Venus' Palaces, and immediately afterwards designates by a general
application of the names which had been given at that time to the two
principal structures: "marke," says he, "the flocking and running to theaters
and curtens, daylie and hourely, night and daye, tyme and tyde, to see
playes and enterludes."[204:A]
This passion for the stage continued rapidly to increase, and before the
year 1590 not less than four or five theatres were in existence. The
patronage of dramatic representation made an equal progress at court; for
though Elizabeth never, it is believed, attended a public theatre, yet had she
four companies of children who frequently performed for her amusement,
denominated the Children of St. Pauls, the Children of Westminster, the
Children of the Chapel, and the Children of Windsor. The public actors too,
who were sometimes, in imitation of these appellations, called the Children
of the Revels, were, towards the close of Her Majesty's reign especially, in
consequence of a greatly acquired superiority over their younger brethren,
often called upon to act before her at the royal theatre in Whitehall.
Exhibitions of this kind at court were usual at Christmas, on Twelfth Night,
at Candlemas, and at Shrove-tide, throughout the reigns of Elizabeth and
James, and the plays of Shakspeare were occasionally the entertainment of
the night: thus we find Love's Labour's Lost to have been performed before
our maiden Queen during the Christmas-holydays, and King Lear to have
been exhibited before King James on St. Stephen's night.[204:B]

On these occasions, the representation was generally at night, that it
might not interfere with the performances at the regular theatres, which
took place early in the afternoon; and we learn from the Council-books, that
the royal remuneration, in the age of Elizabeth, for the exhibition of a single
play at Whitehall, amounted to ten pounds, of which, twenty nobles, or six
pounds thirteen shillings, and four-pence, formed the customary fee; and
three pounds, six shillings, and eight-pence, the free gift or bounty. If,
however, the performers were required to leave the capital for any of the
royal palaces in its neighbourhood, the fee, in consequence of the public
exhibition of the day being prevented, was augmented to twenty pounds.
The protection of the drama by Elizabeth and her ministers, though it did
not exempt the public players, except in one instance, from the penalties of
statutes against vagabonds, yet it induced, during the whole of her long
reign, numerous instances of private patronage from the most opulent of her
nobility and gentry, who, possessing the power of licensing their own
domestics as comedians, and, consequently of protecting them from the
operation of the act of vagrancy, sheltered various companies of performers,
under the denomination of their servants, or retainers,—a privilege which
was taken away, by act of parliament, on the accession of James, and, as
Mr. Chalmers observes, "put an end for ever to the scenic system of prior
times."[205:A]
To this private patronage of the latter half of the sixteenth century, we
must ascribe not less than fourteen distinct companies of players, that, in
succession, contributed to exhilarate the golden days of England's matchless
Queen, and, in their turn, enjoyed the honour of contributing to her
amusement. Of these, the following is a chronological enumeration:—Soon
after the accession of Elizabeth, appeared Lord Leicester's company, the
same which, in 1574, was finally incorporated by royal licence; in 1572,
was formed Sir Robert Lane's company; in the same year Lord Clinton's; in
1575, companies were created by Lord Warwick, and the Lord

Chamberlain, the name of Shakspeare being enrolled among the servants of
the latter, who, in the first year of the subsequent reign, became entitled to
the appellation of His Majesty's servants; in 1576, the Earl of Sussex
brought forward a theatrical body, and in 1577, Lord Howard another,
neither of which, however, attained much eminence; in 1578, the Earl of
Essex mustered a company of players, and in 1579, Lord Strange, and the
Earl of Derby, followed his example; in 1591, the Lord Admiral produced
his set of comedians; in 1592, the Earl of Hertford effected a similar
arrangement; in 1593, Lord Pembroke protected an association of actors,
and, at the close of Her Majesty's reign, the Earl of Worcester had in pay,
also, a company of theatrical performers.
In the mean time theatres, both public and private, were greatly on the
increase, and, during the period that Shakspeare immortalised the stage, not
less than seven of these structures, of established notoriety, were in
existence. Four of them were considered as public theatres, namely, The
Globe on the Bankside, The Curtain in Shoreditch, The Red Bull in St.
John's Street, and The Fortune in Whitecross Street; and three were termed
private houses, one, for instance, in Blackfriars, another in Whitefriars, and
The Cockpit or Phœnix, in Drury-Lane. As The Globe, however, and the
theatre in Blackfriars were the property of the same set of players, only six
companies of comedians were formed, or wanted, for the purposes of
representation.
Beside these principal play-houses, several others, possessing a more
ephemeral existence, as The Swan, The Rose, &c., sprung up and fell in
succession, forming altogether such a number, as justly gave alarm and
offence to the stricter clergy, and at length attracted the attention of the
privy-council, who, on the 22d of June, 1600, issued an order for the
reduction of the number of play-houses, limiting these buildings to two,
selecting that called The Fortune for Middlesex, and fixing on The Globe
for Surrey. To such a degree, however, had now arisen the attachment of the

people to dramatic recreations, that notwithstanding these orders were re-
issued, with still stronger injunctions, the following year, they could never
be carried into any effectual execution.
Much as Elizabeth favoured the stage, it appears to have been patronised
by her successor with equal, if not superior, zeal. James may be said,
indeed, to have given a dignity and consequence to the profession, to which
it had hitherto been a stranger, and to have introduced into the theatric
world, a new, and better constituted arrangement of its parts. No sooner had
he ascended the throne, than three companies were formed under his
auspices; the Lord Chamberlain's servants he adopted as his own; the Queen
chose the Earl of Worcester's, and Prince Henry fixed upon the Earl of
Nottingham's; and on the 19th of May, only twelve days after his arrival in
London, he granted to his own company, being that performing at The
Globe, the following licence, which was first published in Rymer's Fœdera,
in 1705:—

"Pro Laurentio Fletcher et Willielmo Shakespeare et aliis.
"A.D. 1603. Pat.
"1. Jac. P. 2. m. 4. James by the grace of God, &c. to all
justices, maiors, sheriffs, constables, headboroughs, and other
our officers and loving subjects, greeting. Know you that wee,
of our special grace, certaine knowledge, and meer motion, have
licensed and authorised, and by these presentes doe licence and
authorize theise our servaunts, Laurence Fletcher, William
Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillippes, John
Hemings, Henrie Condel, William Sly, Robert Armin, Richard
Cowly, and the rest of their associates, freely to use and exercise
the art and faculty of playing comedies, tragedies, histories,
interludes, morals, pastorals, stage-plaies, and such like other

as thei have alreadie studied or hereafter shall use or studie, as
well for the recreation of our loving subjects, as for our solace
and pleasure when we shall thincke good to see them, during our
pleasure: and the said comedies, tragedies, histories, enterludes,
morals, pastorals, stage-plaies, and such like, to shew and
exercise publiquely to their best commoditie, when the infection
of the plague shall decrease, as well within theire nowe usuall
house called the Globe, within our county of Surrey, as also
within anie towne-halls or moute-halls, or other convenient
places within the liberties and freedom of any other citie,
universitie, toun, or boroughe whatsoever, within our said
realmes and dominions. Willing and commanding you and
everie of you, as you tender our pleasure, not onelie to permit
and suffer them herein, without any your letts, hindrances, or
molestations, during our pleasure, but also to be aiding or
assistinge to them if any wrong be to them offered, and to allow
them such former curtesies as hathe been given to men of their
place and quallitie; and also what further favour you shall shew
to theise our servaunts for our sake, we shall take kindlie at your
handes. In witness whereof, &c.
"Witness our selfe at Westminster, the nynteenth daye of
Maye,
"Per Breve de private sigillo."[208:A]
To The Globe mentioned in this licence, and to the play-house in
Blackfriars, as being the theatres exclusively belonging to Shakspeare's
company, and where all his dramas were performed, we shall now confine
our attention, the customs and usages of these, the one being a public, and
the other a private theatre, pretty accurately applying to the rest.

The exact era of the building of The Globe has not been ascertained. Mr.
Malone, from the documents which he consulted, conceives it to have been
erected not long anterior to the year 1596; and Mr. Chalmers, resting on the
evidence of Norden's map of London, concludes it to have been built before
the year 1593.[208:B] Its scite appears to have been on the southern side of
the Thames, called the Bankside, and its form, which was of considerable
size, to have been externally hexagonal, and internally circular. It was
constructed of wood, and only partly thatched, its centre being open to the
weather. It was probably named The Globe, not from the circularity of its
interior, but from its sign exhibiting Hercules supporting the globe, under
which was inscribed, Totus mundus agit histrionem.
Being a public theatre, The Globe was likewise distinguished by a pole
erected on its roof, to which, during the hours of exhibition, a flag was
attached; for, by reason of its central exposure, it necessarily became a
summer theatre, its performers, the King's company, usually commencing
their season here during the month of May. The exhibitions at the Globe
were frequent, and it is said, chiefly calculated for the lower class of people,
the upper ranks, and the critics, generally preferring the private theatres,
which were smaller, and more conveniently fitted up. The advantages of
elegance and decoration, however, were no longer wanting to The Globe, in
1614; for the old structure, consisting of wood and thatch, being burnt down
on the 29th of June, 1613, the subsequent year saw it rise from its ashes
with considerable splendour.[209:A]
The Theatre in Blackfriars may be classed among the earliest buildings
of the kind, being certainly in existence before 1580. It was erected near the
present site of Apothecaries' Hall, and being without the liberties of the city
of London, had the good fortune to escape the levelling fury of the fanatics,
who, shortly after the above period, obtained leave to destroy all the play-
houses within the jurisdiction of the city.

It does not appear that Shakspeare's company, or the King's servants, had
any interest in this theatre before the winter of 1604, at which period, or in
the following spring, they became its purchasers; the children of the Revels,
or, as they were sometimes called, the children of Blackfriars, being the
usual performers at this house, prior to that event.
The distinctions subsisting between Blackfriars and The Globe, seem to
have been nothing more, than that the former being a private, and a winter,
house, was smaller, more compactly put together, and, as the
representations were by candle-light, better calculated for the purposes of
warmth and protection. As the internal structure, however, with the
exception of the open centre, was similar to that of The Globe, and as the
economy and usages were, there is every reason to believe, the same, not
only in both these houses, but in every other contemporary theatre, the
subsequent notices may be considered as applying, where not otherwise
expressed, to the general state of the Elizabethan stage, though immediately
derived from the costume of The Globe.
The interior architectural arrangements of this ancient theatre have been,
in their leading features, preserved to the present day. The galleries, or
scaffolds, as they were sometimes called, were constructed over each other,
occupying three sides of the house, and assuming, according to the plan of
the building, a square or semicircular form. Beneath these were small
apartments, called rooms, intended for the genteeler part of the audience,
and answering, in almost every respect, to our modern boxes. In The Globe,
these were open to all who chose to pay for them, but at Blackfriars and
other private theatres, there is some reason to conclude, that they were
occasionally the property of individuals, who secured their claim through
the medium of a key.[210:A]
It has been remarked, that the centre of The Globe, or summer theatre,
was open to the weather, and, from the first temporary play-houses having

been built in the area of inns or common osteries, this was usually called
The Yard. It had neither floor nor benches, and the common people standing
here to see the performance, were, therefore, termed by Shakspeare
groundlings; an epithet repeated by Decker, who speaks of "the groundling
and gallery commoner, buying his sport by the penny."[211:A] The similar
space at Blackfriars was named the Pit, but seems to have differed in no
other respect than in being protected by a roof. It was separated from the
stage merely by a railing of pales, for there was no intervening orchestra,
the music, consisting chiefly of trumpets, cornets, hautboys, lutes,
recorders, viols, and organs, being executed by a band of eight or ten
performers, who were stationed in an elevated balcony nearly occupying
that part of the house which is now denominated the upper stage-box.
The stage itself appears to have been divided into two parts, namely the
lower and the upper stage; the former with nearly the same relative
elevation with regard to the pit as in the theatres of our own times; the
latter, resembling a balcony in shape, was placed towards the rear of the
former, having its platform not less than eight or nine feet from the ground.
This was a contrivance attended with much conveniency; here was
represented the play before the King in Hamlet; here, in several of the old
plays, part of the dialogue was carried on, and here, having curtains which
drew in front, were occasionally concealed, from the view of the audience,
persons whose seclusion might be necessary to the business of the plot.
Curtains also of woollen, or silk, were hung in the front of the greater or
lower stage, not suspended, in the modern style, by lines and pullies, but
opening in the middle, and sliding on an iron rod.
Beside the accommodation of boxes, pit, and galleries, in the usual parts
of the house, two boxes, one on each side, were attached to the balcony or
upper stage, and were termed private boxes; but, being inconveniently
situated, and, as Decker remarks, "almost smothered in darkness," were

seldom frequented, except from motives of eccentricity, by characters
higher than waiting-women and gentlemen-ushers.[211:B] Seats, also, at the
private theatres, were allowed to be placed on the stage, and were generally
occupied by the wits, gallants, and critics of the day: thus Decker observes,
—"by sitting on the stage, you have a signed patent to engross the whole
commodity of censure; may lawfully presume to be a girder, and stand at
the helm to steer the passage of scenes."[212:A]
The passage in italics which closes this quotation, would seem to be
decisive of the long agitated question relative to the use of scenery; Mr.
Malone asserting,—"that the stage of Shakspeare was not furnished with
moveable painted scenes, but merely decorated with curtains, and arras or
tapestry hangings, which, when decayed, appear to have been sometimes
ornamented with pictures[212:B];" and Mr. Steevens contending, that where
so much machinery as the plays of Shakspeare require, is allowed to have
been employed, the less complicated adjunct of scenes could scarcely be
wanting; for that where "the column is found standing, no one will suppose
but that it was once accompanied by its usual entablature.—In short," he
adds, "without characteristic discriminations of place, the historical dramas
of Shakspeare in particular would have been wrapped in tenfold confusion
and obscurity; nor could the spectator have felt the poet's power, or
accompanied his rapid transitions from one situation to another, without
such guides as painted canvas only could supply.—But for these, or such
assistances, the spectator, like Hamlet's mother, must have bent his gaze on
mortifying vacancy; and with the guest invited by the Barmecide, in the
Arabian tale, must have furnished from his own imagination the
entertainment of which his eyes were solicited to partake."[212:C]
If the machinery accompanying trap-doors, tombs, and cauldrons, the
appearance of ghosts, phantoms, and monsters, the descent of gods, the
magic evanishment of articles of furniture and provision, and the confliction
of the elements, were not strangers to the Shakspearean theatre, it surely

would have been an easy matter to have transferred the frame-work and
painted canvas which, according to Holinshed, and even preceding
chroniclers, decorated the pageants and tournaments of those days, to the
business of the stage. Nor can we, indeed, conceive, as Mr. Steevens has
remarked, how the minute inventory of Imogen's bedchamber, and the
accurate description of the exterior of Inverness Castle, could have been
rendered intelligible or endurable without such assistance.
It is highly, probable, therefore, from these considerations, and from the
passage in Decker, that, notwithstanding the mass of negative evidence
collected by Mr. Malone, moveable painted scenes were occasionally
introduced on the stage during the age of Shakspeare; and it may be further
reasonably concluded, that, from the phrase of STEERING the PASSAGE of
scenes, the mechanism was formed and conducted on a plan approximating
that which is now familiar to a modern audience.
The conjecture of Mr. Steevens, however, that private theatres had no
scenes, while the public had, owing to the former admitting part of the
audience on the stage, who might interfere with the convenient shifting of
such an apparatus, is annihilated by the quotation from Decker, who
expressly says, that "by SITTING ON THE STAGE, you have a signed patent to
stand at the helm to steer the passage of the scenes," by which it would
appear, that those who obtained seats on the private stage, occasionally
amused themselves by assisting the regular mechanists in the adjustment of
the scenery.
We learn, also, from Heywood[213:A], that the internal roof of the stage
was either painted of a sky-blue colour, or hung with drapery of a similar
tint, in order to represent the HEAVENS; and there is much reason to suppose,
with a very ingenious commentator, that when the idea of a gloomy and
starless night was to be impressed, these heavens were hung with black,

whence, among many passages in Shakspeare illustrative of this position,
the following line manifestly owes its origin:—

"Hung be the Heavens with black, yield day to night."[214:A]

It has, likewise, been asserted, and, indeed, to a certain extent, proved,
by the same learned writer, that the lower part of the stage was
distinguished by the name of HELL; and he quotes the annexed passage from
Chapman as decisive on the subject:—

"The fortune of a Stage (like fortune's self)
Amazeth greatest judgments: and none knows
The hidden causes of those strange effects,
That rise from this Hell, or fall from this Heaven."[214:B]

From this connection of the celestial and infernal regions with the stage,
Mr. Whiter has inferred, through the medium of numerous pertinent
quotations from Shakspeare and his contemporaries, that a vast mass of
imagery was so blended and associated in the mind of our great poet, as to
form an intimate union in his ideas between HELL and NIGHT; the DARKENED
[214:C]
HEAVENS and the STAGE of TRAGEDY ; and this, too, at an early period,
even during the composition of his Rape of Lucrece, which contains some
striking instances of this theatrical combination.
To these notices on the interior structure of the Shakspearean theatre, we
shall now add the most material circumstances relative to its economy and
usages.
The mode of announcing its exhibitions, if we except the medium of
newspapers, a resource of subsequent times, seems to have been not less
effectual and extensive than that of the present day. Play-bills were printed,
expressing the title of the piece or pieces to be performed, but containing

neither the names of the characters, nor of the actors; these were
industriously circulated through the town, and affixed to posts and public
buildings, a custom which forms the subject of a repartee recorded by
Taylor the water-poet, who began to write towards the close of Shakspeare's
life:—"Master Field, the player," he relates, "riding up Fleet-street a great
pace, a gentleman called him, and asked him, what play was played that
day. He being angry to be staied on so frivolous a demand, answered, that
he might see what play was plaied upon every poste. I cry you mercy, said
the gentleman, I tooke you for a poste, you rode so fast."[215:A]
In the early part of the reign of Elizabeth, the Days of Acting, at the
public theatres, were chiefly confined to Sundays, Her Majesty's licence to
Burbage in 1574, granting such exhibition on that day, out of the hours of
prayer; and this was the day which the Queen herself usually selected for
dramatic representation at court. The rapidly increasing taste, however, for
theatric amusement soon induced the players to go beyond the limits of
permission, and we find Gosson, in 1579, exclaiming, that the players,
"because they are allowed to play every Sunday, make four or five Sundays,
at least, every week."[215:B] A reformation more consonant to morality and
decorum took place in the subsequent reign; for, though plays were still
performed on Sundays, at the court of James the First, yet they were no
longer tolerated on that day at the public theatres, permission being now
given, on application to the Master of the Revels, for their performance
every day, save on the Sabbath, during the winter, and with no further
exception than the Wednesdays and Fridays of Lent, which were at that time
called sermon-days.
The Hours of Acting, during the whole period of Shakspeare's career,
continued to be early in the afternoon. In 1598, we are informed by an
epigram of Sir John Davies, that one o'clock was the usual time for the
commencement of the play:—