"The 'Return from Parnassus' was published anonymously, and the copy I have used is dateless. It was 'publicly acted by the students of St. John's College in Cambridge.' In Act I., Scene 2d, characters are given of Spenser, Ben Jonson, Marlow, Drayton, Marston and Shakespeare, together with some other of the known poets and dramatists of the Elizabethan age. It contains many references to tobacco. In 'Act IV., Scene 1st,' the characters are thus placed: 'Sir Rodericke and Prodigo at one corner of the stage, Recorder and Amaretto at the other. Two pages scouring of Tobacco pipes.' Actual smoking from tobacco-pipes was introduced on the stage afterwards; and instances from the early dramas have been given by the writers on tobacco history. In the second scene of Act III. smoking is alluded to as one of the marks of the current man of fashion, and is coupled with that of wearing love-locks, which was to prove such a scandal to the Puritans. 'He gins to follow fashions. He wore thin sireduelt in a smooky roofe, must take tobacco and must weare a locke.' 'Work for Chimney Sweepers, or a Warning against Tobacconists, by J. H.,' was published in quarto in the year 1602.
"It was answered in the same year by the anonymous 'Defence of Tobacco,' a quarto of seventy pages. The author of the attack followed the line of King James, or, I should rather say, showed him the line to take, for the King's 'Counterblast' did not appear until he had been King of England for some years. The book is divided into sections, each section being called 'A Reason.' The seventh 'Reason' against the use of tobacco is, that the devil is the discoverer and suggester of smoking. 'It was first used and practised,' says J. H., 'by devils, priests, and, therefore, not to be used by us Christians. That the devil was the first author hereof. Monardus, in his 'Treatise of Tabaco,' dooth sufficiently witnesse, saying: The Indian priests, who, no doubt, were instruments of the devil, whom they serve, even before they answer to questions propounded to them by their princes, drinke of this tobacco-fume, with the vigour and strength whereof they fall suddenly to the ground as dead men, remaining so according to the quantity of smoke that they had taken. And when the hearbe hath done his worke, they revive and wake, giving answers according to the vissions and illusions which they saw while they were wrapt in that order.' It is not unlikely that J. H.'s authority had confused opium with tobacco.
"It was the opinion of the age that every Pagan deity had a real existence in the world of evil spirits. After further quotations of Monardus, to prove that the devil is 'the author of Tobacco, and of the knowledge thereof,' J. H. concludes his seventh reason by declaring, 'Wherefore in mine opinion this practice is more to be excluded of us Christians, who follow Veritie and Truth, and detest and abhor the devil as a lyar and deceiver of mankind.' In the first year of this century, pipes were not only exhibited, but were used upon the stage. They seem at first to have been smoked, not during 'the induction.' In the induction to Ben Jonson's 'Cynthia's Revels' (1601), the Third Child says: 'Now, sir, suppose I am one of your genteel auditors, that am come in, having paid my money at the door, with much ado; and here take my place, and sit down, I have my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket, my light by me, and thus I begin.' The Third Child thereupon smokes; but it seems as if the smoking on the stage was a kind of protest against a prior smoking in the pit. In John Webster's 'Malcontent,' as augmented by John Marston in 1604, Sly says in the introduction: 'Come, coose, (coz or goose!) let's take some tobacco.'
"In 'The Puritan, or the Widow of Watling Street,' published in 1607, and attributed by some to Shakespeare, tobacco-taking or tobacco-drinking (as smoking was then usually called) appears no longer in the induction, but in the play itself, Idle, the highwayman, says to the old soldier, Skirmish, 'Have you any tobacco about you?' Idle being supplied, smokes a pipe on the stage. These extracts, however, may have been cited before, together with others of like character in the great days of the English Drama. Pipes continued to appear upon the stage until its abolition (in company with the Prayer Book) by the Puritan rulers. They reappeared on the stage of the Restoration. In Thomas Shadwell's 'Virtuos' (1676),—to take one instance,—Mirando and Clarinda fling away Snarl's cane, hat and periwig, and break his pipes, because he 'takes nasty tobacco before ladies.'"
There is printed evidence, however, in this same period to show not only that all the English ladies of the time were not enemies to tobacco, but that some of them were themselves smokers. In 1674 an anonymous quarto appeared under the title of "The Women's Petition against Coffee." It was a protest against the growing influence of the coffee-houses in seducing men away from their homes to sit together making mischief and drinking "this boiled soot." It was answered in the same year by "The Men's Answer to the Women's Petition." After speaking of the providential introduction of coffee into England in the midst of the Puritan epoch, when Englishmen wanted some kind of drink which would "at once make them sober and merry," the writer glorifies the coffee-house.
John Taylor, "the Water Poet," made a kind of compromise when he attributed the introduction of tobacco, not to the devil, but to Pluto,—"Pluto's Proclamation concerning his Infernal Pleasure for the Propagation of Tobacco." It appears in the folio collection of his works of the year 1628. The confusion of tobacco with opium and such destructive drugs seems to have been common with the travelers of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries. Camerarius, in his "Historical Meditations," translated into English by John Malle (folio, 1621), speaks of tobacco as to be seen growing in many gardens throughout Europe. He quotes Jerome Benzo as saying that in Hispaniola "there be among them some that take so much of it, as their senses being all overcome and made drunke with the same, they fell down flat to the ground as if they were dead, and there lie without sense or feeling most part of the day or of the night."
The tobacco-box, during the reign of Elizabeth, was no unimportant part of a dandy's outfit; sometimes a pouch or bag was used. Tobacco-boxes came into general use in England soon after the introduction of tobacco, and were much sought after by all who "drank" tobacco. Marston, the Duke of New Castle, and other dramatists, alluded to the tobacco-box as a part of the smoker's outfit; thus in the play of "The Man in the Moone" (1609), one character, in answer to an inquiry who one of the company is, answers: "I know not certainly, but I think he cometh to play you a fit of mirth, for I behelde pipes in his pocket; now he draweth forth his tinder-box and his touchwood, and falleth to his tacklings; sure his throate is on fire, the smoke flyeth so fast from his mouth; blesse his beard with a bason of water, lest he burn it; some terrible thing he taketh, it maketh him pant and look pale, and hath an odious taste, he spitteth so after it."
The tobacco boxes of the Seventeenth Century were much larger than those of the present. Some of them held a pound of tobacco besides space for a number of pipes.
Many of them were made of brass while others were fashioned from horn:
"There is also a simple and ingenious tobacco-box used frequently in ale-houses, 'which keeps its own account,' with each smoker and acts also as a money-box. It is kept on parlor tables for the use of all comers; but none can obtain a pipe-full, till the money is deposited through a hole in the lid. A penny dropped in, causes a bolt to unfasten, and allow the smoker to help himself from a drawer full of tobacco. His honor is trusted so far as not to take more than his pipe-full, and he is reminded of it by a verse engraved on the lid:—