MARKETS AND FAIRS.
In a quiet country town like Stratford the weekly market was an occasion of some interest to the boys as to their elders. There is still such a market on Fridays at Stratford, when wares of many sorts are exposed for sale in the streets, and people from the neighboring villages come to buy. In old times there would have been a greater throng of buyers and sellers. "The housewife from her little farm would ride in gallantly between her paniers laden with butter, eggs, chickens, and capons. The farmer would stand by his pitched corn, and, as Harrison complains, if the poor man handled the sample with the intent to purchase his humble bushel, the man of many sacks would declare that it was sold. There, before shops were many and their stocks extensive, would come the dealers from Birmingham and Coventry, with wares for use and wares for show,—horse-gear and women-gear, Sheffield whittles, and rings with posies."
We find a number of allusions to these markets in Shakespeare's plays. In Love's Labour's Lost (v. 2. 318) Biron, ridiculing Boyet, says of him:—
"He is art's pedler, and retails his wares
At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs."
In the same play (iii. 1. 111) there is an allusion to the old proverb, "Three women and a goose make a market," where Costard, referring to Moth's nonsense about "the fox, the ape, and the humble-bee," followed by the goose that made up four, says, "And he [the goose] ended the market."
In As You Like It (iii. 2. 104) Touchstone, making fun of Orlando's verses which Rosalind has just read, says: "I'll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners and suppers and sleeping-hours excepted: it is the right butter-women's rank to market"; that is, the metre is just like the jog-trot of countrywomen riding to market one after another, with their butter and eggs.
In Richard III. (i. 1. 160) Gloster, after saying that he means to "marry Warwick's youngest daughter," adds:—
"But yet I run before my horse to market:
Clarence still breathes, Edward still lives and reigns;
When they are gone, then must I count my gains."
He means, in the language of a more familiar proverb, that he is counting his chickens before they are hatched; that is, he is too hasty in reckoning upon the success of his plans.
THE FAIR
In 1 Henry VI. (iii. 2) Joan of Arc gets into Rouen with her soldiers in the guise of countrymen bound for market:—
"Enter La Pucelle, disguised, and Soldiers dressed like countrymen, with sacks upon their backs.
Pucelle. These are the city gates, the gates of Rouen,
Through which our policy must make a breach.
Take heed, be wary how you place your words;
Talk like the vulgar sort of market-men,
That come to gather money for their corn.
If we have entrance—as I hope we shall—
And that we find the slothful watch but weak,
I'll by a sign give notice to our friends
That Charles the Dauphin may encounter them.
1 Soldier. Our sacks shall be a mean to sack the city,
And we be lords and rulers over Rouen;
Therefore we'll knock. [Knocks.
Guard. [Within.] Qui est la?
Pucelle. Paisans, pauvres gens de France:
Poor market-folks, that come to sell their corn.
Guard. [Opening the gates.] Enter, go in; the market-bell
is rung.
Pucelle. Now, Rouen, I'll shake thy bulwarks to the
ground."
The "market-bell" was rung at the hour when the market was to begin.
In the same play (v. 5. 54), when a dower is proposed for Margaret, who is to marry Henry, Suffolk says:—
"A dower, my lords! disgrace not so your king,
That he should be so abject, base, and poor,
To choose for wealth, and not for perfect love.
Henry is able to enrich his queen,
And not to seek a queen to make him rich:
So worthless peasants bargain for their wives,
As market-men for oxen, sheep, or horse."
In 2 Henry VI. (v. 2. 62), when Cade has said boastingly, "I am able to endure much," Dick makes the comment, aside: "No question of that; for I have seen him whipped three market-days together."
There are many other allusions to markets, market-men, market-maids, etc., in the plays, but these will suffice for illustration here.
The semi-annual Fair was a market on a grander scale. The increased crowd of dealers called for certain police regulations, and these were strictly enforced. The town council appointed to each trade a particular station in the streets. Thus, raw hides were to be exposed for sale in the Rother Market. Sellers of butter, cheese, wick-yarn, and fruits were to set up their stalls by the cross at the Guild Chapel. A part of the High Street was assigned to country butchers. Pewterers were ordered to "pitch" their wares in Wood Street, and to pay fourpence a square yard for the ground they occupied. Salt-wagons, whose owners did a large business when salted meats formed the staple supply of food, were permitted to stand about the cross in the Rother Market. At various points victuallers could erect booths. These regulations were necessary to prevent strife concerning locations, and violations were punished by heavy fines.
Mr. Knight remarks: "At the joyous Fair-season it would seem that the wealth of a world was emptied into Stratford; not only the substantial things, the wine, the wax, the wheat, the wool, the malt, the cheese, the clothes, the napery, such as even great lords sent their stewards to the Fairs to buy, but every possible variety of such trumpery as fills the pedler's pack,—ribbons, inkles, caddises, coifs, stomachers, pomanders, brooches, tapes, shoe-ties. Great dealings were there on these occasions in beeves and horses, tedious chafferings, stout affirmations, saints profanely invoked to ratify a bargain. A mighty man rides into the Fair who scatters consternation around. It is the Queen's Purveyor. The best horses are taken up for her Majesty's use, at her Majesty's price; and they probably find their way to the Earl of Leicester's or the Earl of Warwick's stables at a considerable profit to Master Purveyor. The country buyers and sellers look blank; but there is no remedy. There is solace, however, if there is not redress. The ivy-bush is at many a door, and the sounds of merriment are within, as the ale and the sack are quaffed to friendly greetings. In the streets there are morris-dancers, the juggler with his ape, and the minstrel with his ballads. We may imagine the foremost in a group of boys listening to the 'small popular musics sung by these cantabanqui upon benches and barrels' heads,' or more earnestly to some one of the 'blind harpers, or such-like tavern minstrels, that give a fit of mirth for a groat; their matters being for the most part stories of old time as The Tale of Sir Topas, Bevis of Southampton, Guy of Warwick, Adam Bell and Clymme of the Clough, and such other old romances or historical rhymes, made purposely for the recreation of the common people.' A bold fellow, who is full of queer stories and cant phrases, strikes a few notes upon his gittern, and the lads and lasses are around him ready to dance their country measures....
"The Fair is over; the booths are taken down; the woolen statute-caps, which the commonest people refuse to wear because there is a penalty for not wearing them, are packed up again; the prohibited felt hats are all sold; the millinery has found a ready market among the sturdy yeomen, who are careful to propitiate their home-staying wives after the fashion of the Wife of Bath's husbands.... The juggler has packed up his cup and balls; the last cudgel-play has been fought out:—
"'Near the dying of the day
There will be a cudgel-play,
Where a coxcomb will be broke
Ere a good word can be spoke:
But the anger ends all here,
Drench'd in ale, or drown'd in beer.'
Morning comes, and Stratford hears only the quiet steps of its native population."
There are many allusions, literal and figurative, to these fairs in Shakespeare's plays, a few of which may be cited here as specimens.
In Love's Labour's Lost, besides the one quoted above (page 199), we find the following simile in Biron's eulogy of Rosaline (iv. 3. 235):—
"Of all complexions the cull'd soverignty
Do meet, as at a fair, in her fair cheek."
In the same play (v. 2. 2), the Princess says to her ladies, referring to the presents they have received:—
"Sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart
If fairings come thus plentifully in."
It was so common a practice to buy presents at fairs that the word fairing, which originally meant presents thus bought, came to be used in a more general sense, as in this passage and many others that might be quoted.
In The Winters Tale (iv. 3. 109) the Clown says of the merry peddler Autolycus that "he haunts wakes, fairs, and bear-baitings." Later (iv. 4) we meet the rogue at the sheep-shearing, where he finds a good market for ribbons, gloves, and other "fairings," which the swains buy for their sweethearts; and when the festival is over he says: "I have sold all my trumpery; not a counterfeit stone, not a ribbon, glass, pomander, brooch, table-book, ballad, knife, tape, glove, shoe-tie, bracelet, horn-ring, to keep my pack from fasting; they throng who should buy first, as if my trinkets had been hallowed and brought a benediction to the buyer."
In 2 Henry IV. (iii. 2. 43) Shallow asks his cousin Silence, "How a good yoke of bullocks now at Stamford fair?" and Silence replies, "By my troth, I was not there." Later (v. 1. 26) Davy asks Shallow: "Sir, do you mean to stop any of William's wages, about the sack he lost the other day at Hinckley fair?"
In Henry VIII. (v. 4. 73) the Chamberlain, seeing the crowd gathered to get a sight of the royal procession, exclaims:—
"Mercy o' me, what a multitude are here!
They grow still too; from all parts they are coming,
As if we kept a fair here."
In Lear (iii. 6. 78) Edgar, in his random talk while pretending to be insane, cries: "Come, march to wakes and fairs and market-towns!"
The "wakes," mentioned so often in connection with fairs, were annual feasts kept to commemorate the dedication of a church; called so, as an old writer tells us, "because the night before they were used to watch till morning in the church." The next day was given up to feasting and all sorts of rural merriment. In the churchwardens' accounts of the time we find charges for "wine and sugar," for "bread, wine, and ale," and the like, for "certain of the parish," for "the singing men and singing children," and others, on these occasions.
At these wakes, as at the fairs and other large gatherings, whether festal or commercial, hawkers and peddlers came to sell their wares and merchants set up their stalls and booths, often in the very churchyard and even on a Sunday. The clergy naturally denounced this profanation of the Sabbath, but it was not entirely suppressed until the reign of Henry VI.
Stubbes, in his Anatomy of Abuses (1583), inveighed against these wakes, as against the May-day sports (page 176 above), especially on account of the money wasted at them, "insomuch as the poor men that bear the charges of these feasts and wakes are the poorer and keep the worser houses a long time after: and no marvel, for many spend more at one of these wakes than in all the whole year besides."
Herrick, in his Hesperides (page 196 above) took a more cheerful view of such rural holidays:—
"Come, Anthea, let us two
Go to feast, as others do.
Tarts and custards, creams and cakes,
Are the junkets still at wakes;
Unto which the tribes resort,
Where the business is the sport.
Morris-dancers thou shalt see,
Marian too in pageantry;
And a mimic to devise
Many grinning properties.
Players there will be, and those
Base in action as in clothes;
Yet with strutting they will please
The incurious villages.
* * * * *
Happy rustics, best content
With the cheapest merriment;
And possess no other fear
Than to want the wake next year;"
that is, to miss or lack it.