Within the city, most of the streets were narrow, poorly paved, and worse lighted. Those who went about by night had their servants carry torches, called "links," before them, or hired boys to light them home. Such sanitation as existed was wretched, so that plagues and other diseases spread rapidly and carried off an appalling number of victims. The ignorance and inefficiency of the police is rather portrayed than satirized in Shakespeare's Dogberry and Verges. Such evils were common to all seventeenth-century cities, but these cities had their compensations in a freedom and picturesqueness which have disappeared from our modern towns.
The Citizens.—In Elizabethan London, as in every city, the men who represented extremes of wealth and poverty, the courtiers and their imitators, the beggars and the sharpers, are those of whom we hear most; but the greater part of the population, that which controlled the city government, was of the middle class, sober, self-respecting tradespeople, inclined towards Puritanism, and jealous of their independence. Such people naturally distrusted and disliked the actors and their class, and used against them, as far as they could, the great authority of the city. In spite of court favor, the actors were compelled by city ordinances to build their theaters outside the city limits or on ground which the city did not control. Several attempts were made to suppress play acting altogether, ostensibly because of the danger that crowded audiences would spread the plague when it became epidemic. In spite of this official opposition, however, the sober citizens formed a goodly part of theater audiences until after the accession of King James, when the rising tide of Puritanism led to increased austerity. At no time were the majority of the citizens entirely free from a love for worldly pleasures. They swelled the crowds at the taverns, and their wives often vied with the great ladies of court in extravagance of dress.
St. Paul's.—The great meeting place of London was, oddly enough, the nave of St. Paul's Cathedral. This superb Gothic church, later destroyed by the Great Fire, was used as a common passageway, as a place for doing business and for meeting friends. In the late morning hours, the men-about-town promenaded there, displaying their gorgeous clothes and hailing those whom they wished to have known as their acquaintances. If a gallant's cash were at low ebb, he loitered there, hoping for an invitation to dinner. If he had had a dinner, he often came back for another stroll in the afternoon. At one pillar he would find lawyers standing; at another, serving men seeking employment; at still another, public secretaries. Here one could learn anything from the latest fashion to the latest political scandal. Meanwhile, divine worship might be going on in the chancel, unobserved unless some fop wished to make himself conspicuous by joking with the choir boys. Thus St. Paul's was a school of life invaluable to the dramatist. We know that Ben Jonson learned much there, and we can hardly doubt that Shakespeare did likewise.
The Taverns.—Another center of London life was the tavern. The man who would now lunch at his club then dined at an 'ordinary,' a table d'hôte in some tavern. Men dined at noon, and then sat on over their wine, smoking or playing at cards or dice. In the evening one could always find there music and good company. One tradition of Shakespeare tells of his evenings at the Mermaid tavern. "Many were the wit-combates," writes Fuller, "betwixt him [Shakespeare] and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great gallion, and an English man of War; Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in Learning; Solid, but Slow in his performances. Shake-spear, with the English man-of-War, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his Wit and Invention." Francis Beaumont, the dramatist, wrote the following verses to Ben Jonson:—
"What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid, heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if everyone from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown
Wit able enough to justify the town
For three days past; wit that might warrant be
For the whole city to talk foolishly
Till that were cancelled; and when that was gone,
We left an air behind us, which alone
Was able to make the two next companies
(Right witty, though but downright fools) more wise."
At the Theater.—Having dined, the Elizabethan gentleman often visited one of the numerous bookshops, or else went to the theater, perhaps to the Globe. In the latter case, since this theater was on the south bank of the Thames, he was most likely to cross the river by boat. A flag, floating from a turret over the theater, announced a performance there. The prices paid for admission varied, but the regular price for entrance to the Globe seems to have been a penny (about fifteen cents in the money of to-day). This, however, gave one only the right to stand in the pit or, perhaps, to sit in the top gallery. For a box the price was probably a shilling (equivalent to two dollars), the poorer seats costing less. At the aristocratic Blackfriars, sixpence (one dollar) was the lowest price. At this theater, the most fashionable occupied seats on the stage, where they were at once extremely conspicuous and in the way of the actors; but this custom probably did not spread to the Globe before 1603. At the Blackfriars, too, one could have a seat in the pit, while at the Globe the pit was filled with a standing, jostling crowd of apprentices and riffraff. In the theater every one was talking, laughing, smoking, buying oranges, nuts, wine, or cheap books from shouting venders, just as is done in some music halls to-day. Once the trumpet had sounded for the third time, indicating the beginning of the performance, a reasonable degree of quiet was restored, until a pause in the action let the uproar burst forth anew. At an Elizabethan theater there were no pauses for shifting scenes. Consequently the few introduced were determined either by convention or by breaks in the action. At the Blackfriars and more aristocratic theaters, there was music between the acts, but at the Globe this was not customary until a comparatively late date, if ever.
An audience like that at the Globe, made up of all sorts and conditions of men from the highest nobility to the lowest criminal, was, quite naturally, not easy to please as a whole. Yet, after all, the Elizabethans were less critical in some respects than we are. Although many comparatively cheap books were published, reading had not then become a habit, and a good plot was not the less appreciated because it was old. The audiences did, however, demand constant variety, so that plays had short runs, and most dramatists were forced to pay more attention to quantity than to quality of production. The playwrights had, nevertheless, one great advantage over ours. Since the performances were given in the afternoon, and since theaters like the Globe were open to the weather, these men wrote for audiences which were fresh and wide-awake, ready to receive the best which the dramatist had to give.
It was under such conditions as these that Shakespeare worked. He wrote for all classes of people, men bound together, nevertheless, by a common enthusiasm for England's past and a common confidence in England's future; men who were constantly coming in contact with persons from all parts of Europe, with sailors and travelers who had seen the wonders of the New World and the Old; men so stimulated by new discoveries, by new achievements of every sort, that hardly anything, even the supernatural, seemed for them impossible. Outside of ancient Athens, no dramatist has had a more favorable environment.
The best books on this subject for the general reader: Sir Walter Besant, London in the Time of the Tudors (London, 1904); H. T. Stephenson, Shakespeare's London (Henry Holt, 1905); T. F. Ordish, Shakespeare's London (The Temple Shakespeare Manuals, 1897).